U+0008 "BS" BACKSPACE Unicode Character

Unicode Version 17.0

BS

U+0008 "BS" BACKSPACE is a control character originally derived from the teletype era, intended to move the cursor or print head one position backward without erasing the preceding character, allowing for overstriking to create combined glyphs or strikethrough effects. In modern digital text processing, it functions primarily as a non-printing instruction, often generated by the Backspace key on a keyboard to delete the character immediately to the left of the cursor, though its actual behavior depends on the software or operating system handling the input. As a control character, it belongs to the C0 Controls block and is typically invisible in rendered text, serving a navigational or editing purpose rather than representing a visible symbol.

General Properties

Code Point U+0008
Version Added 1.1
Unicode 1.0 Name Backspace
Block Basic Latin
General Category Control
Canonical Combining Class Not Reordered
Bidirectional Class Boundary Neutral
Alias BACKSPACE (control)
BS (abbreviation)

Encodings

HTML Decimal Encoding 
HTML Hex Encoding 
UTF-8 Encoding 0x08
UTF-16 Encoding 0x0008
UTF-32 Encoding 0x00000008
C/C++/Java Escape \u0008

Unicode Properties

NFC Quick Check Yes
NFD Quick Check Yes
NFKC Quick Check Yes
NFKD Quick Check Yes
Numeric Type None
Numeric Value NaN
Line Break Combining Mark
Script Common
Script Extensions Common
Indic Syllabic Category Other
Vertical Orientation Rotated
Grapheme Cluster Break Control
Word Break Other
Sentence Break Other