Variation Selector

Variation Selector is a mechanism that allows a base character to have multiple distinct visual forms, known as variation sequences, without altering its underlying codepoint. These selectors are a range of special invisible codepoints (U+FE00 to U+FE0F and U+E0100 to U+E01EF) that are placed immediately after a base character to request a specific glyph variant, such as a text style versus an emoji style for symbols, or a different rendering for certain CJK ideographs. The mapping from a base character plus a selector to a defined variant is standardized in a special data file, and if no such mapping exists for a given pair, the selector is ignored, leaving the default appearance unchanged. This system ensures that typographic distinctions are encoded selectably, while keeping the core text data stable and interoperable across platforms and fonts.