Variation Selectors is a Unicode block containing 16 variation selectors used to specify a glyph variant for a preceding character. They are currently used to specify standardized variation sequences for mathematical symbols, emoji symbols, 'Phags-pa letters, and CJK unified ideographs corresponding to CJK compatibility ideographs.
These combining characters are variation selector-1 (for U+FE00) through variation selector-16 (U+FE0F), and are abbreviated VS1 – VS16. Each applies to the immediately preceding character.
At present only standardized variation sequences with VS1–VS4, VS7, VS15 and VS16 have been defined; VS15 and VS16 are reserved to request that a character should be displayed as text or as an emoji respectively.
As of Unicode 17.0: CJK compatibility ideograph variation sequences contain VS1–VS3 (U+FE00–U+FE02) CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A and B variation sequences contain VS1 (U+FE00) and VS2 (U+FE01) Emoji variation sequences contain VS16 (U+FE0F) for emoji-style (with color) or VS15 (U+FE0E) for text style (monochrome). This use is deprecated; newer emoji versions of existing dingbat characters have a separate code point for the emoji form, such as whose dingbat form is . Basic Latin, Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms, Manichaean, Myanmar, Myanmar Extended-A, Phags-pa, and mathematical variation sequences contain only VS1 (U+FE00) Egyptian Hieroglyphs variation sequences VS1–VS7 (U+FE00–FE06) are used to rotate specific signs VS8–VS14 (U+FE07–FE0D) are not used for any variation sequences
This list is continued in the Variation Selectors Supplement.
See also
Variant form (Unicode)
History The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Variation Selectors block:
Version Count L2 ID WG2 ID Document 3.2 U+FE00..FE0F 16 html) N2403
References