Skip to content
The Unicode Lapidary

/static/lapidario/en/

Menu

Living collection · UNI-001 to UNI-027

The characters typography cut and the keyboard hid, one per page.

Em dashes, curly quotes, spaces of every width and marks nobody sees: every gem gets its card, its label, and the answer to the question that matters — how to summon it from the keyboard.

Open the display case Why this way Where it came from

Drawers

The five drawers these gems are kept in.

The whole display case

  1. UNI-001 — The long dash that opens dialogue and cuts the sentence — the hyphen never could. Dashes common
  2. UNI-002 – The middle dash of ranges: pages 12–20, the years 1990–1999. Dashes uncommon
  3. UNI-003 ‑ The hyphen that won't let the line split the word in half. Dashes forgotten
  4. UNI-004 ⟨SHY⟩ Invisible until the line runs out; then it surfaces as a hyphen, in the right place. Dashes forgotten
  5. UNI-005 − The real minus: same width and same axis as the plus sign. Dashes forgotten
  6. UNI-006 “ ” The curves that open and close a quotation — the straight key flattened both. Quotes common
  7. UNI-007 ‘ ’ The quote within the quote — and the apostrophe the keyboard never had. Quotes common
  8. UNI-008 „ The quote that opens at ground level — Germans and Czechs still set it today. Quotes forgotten
  9. UNI-009 « » The double arrows of French quotation — guillemets, by their given name. Quotes uncommon
  10. UNI-010 ⟨NBSP⟩ The space that holds two neighbors on the same line — Fig. 7 never parts again. Spaces common
  11. UNI-011 ⟨THSP⟩ A thread of white, one fifth of an em: the breath the full space overdoes. Spaces uncommon
  12. UNI-012 ⟨HSP⟩ The smallest visible blank in the catalogue: a hair between two touching gems. Spaces forgotten
  13. UNI-013 ⟨NNBSP⟩ Thin and welded: the space French demands before the exclamation mark. Spaces uncommon
  14. UNI-014 ⟨IDSP⟩ A blank exactly the size of an ideograph — the indent of the Japanese paragraph. Spaces uncommon
  15. UNI-015 ⟨ZWSP⟩ No width, only permission: the line may break here, with no hyphen and no blank. Spaces uncommon
  16. UNI-016 ⟨ZWJ⟩ The invisible weld: three emoji and two ZWJs make one family. Invisibles uncommon
  17. UNI-017 ⟨ZWNJ⟩ The invisible wedge: it keeps two letters from joining where they shouldn't. Invisibles forgotten
  18. UNI-018 ⟨WJ⟩ Zero width, zero breaks: the link that binds without taking up room. Invisibles forgotten
  19. UNI-019 ⟨LRM⟩ The invisible compass that returns a passage to left-to-right reading. Invisibles forgotten
  20. UNI-020 ⟨RLM⟩ The LRM's twin, pointing to the other side of the world. Invisibles forgotten
  21. UNI-021 … Three dots in a single gem — and the line never splits them. Signs common
  22. UNI-022 · The dot that floats mid-line — Catalan can't live without it. Signs uncommon
  23. UNI-023 † The second step of the footnote ladder, inherited from the scribes. Signs uncommon
  24. UNI-024 § The doubled S that addresses sections — the lawyers' favorite gem. Signs common
  25. UNI-025 The letter of the paragraph: visible in manuscripts, now hidden behind every Enter. Signs uncommon
  26. UNI-026 ′ ″ The signs for minutes, seconds, feet and inches — forever impersonated by the apostrophe. Signs forgotten
  27. UNI-027 × The operator the letter x has understudied since the typewriter. Signs uncommon