Variation Selectors (Unicode block) explained

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. 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.^{[3] [4]}

These combining characters are named variation selector-1 (for U+FE00) through to variation selector-16 (U+FE0F), and are abbreviated VS1 – VS16. Each applies to the immediately preceding character.

As of Unicode 13.0:^[5]

• 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)
• 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 - VS4 and VS7 (U+FE00 - FE03, and FE06) are used to rotate specific signs
• VS5, VS6, and VS8 - VS14 (U+FE04, FE05, and 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:

		Count	L2 ID	WG2 ID	Document
3.2	U+FE00..FE0F	16
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				N2403

Notes and References

1. Web site: Unicode character database. The Unicode Standard. 2023-07-26.
2. Web site: Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard. The Unicode Standard. 2023-07-26.
3. Web site: StandardizedVariants.txt . Unicode Consortium . 2015-11-20 . 2016-08-28 .
4. Web site: Emoji Variation Sequences . Unicode Consortium . 2020-09-18 . 2020-11-18 .
5. Web site: UCD: Standardized Variation Sequences. Unicode Consortium .