U+2121 "℡" Telephone Sign Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
℡
U+2121 "℡" Telephone Sign is a typographic symbol representing a telephone, often used in older signage, business directories, and telecommunications contexts to indicate a phone number or a place where a telephone can be found. It is part of the Letterlike Symbols block, which includes characters that resemble letters but serve as symbols for specific concepts. The character is encoded as a single glyph, distinct from a combination of the letters “TEL,” and is particularly common in Japanese and East Asian advertising and informational displays. Its inclusion in Unicode ensures consistent representation across digital platforms, preserving a classic icon of communication before emoji and modern telephone icons became widespread.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+2121 |
| Version Added | 1.1 |
| Name | Telephone Sign |
| Unicode 1.0 Name | T E L Symbol |
| Block | Letterlike Symbols |
| General Category | Other Symbol |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Other Neutral |
| Decomposition Type | Compat |
| Decomposition Mapping | "T" U+0054 Latin Capital Letter T "E" U+0045 Latin Capital Letter E "L" U+004C Latin Capital Letter L |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ℡ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ℡ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE2 0x84 0xA1 |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x2121 |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x00002121 |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u2121 |