Variation Selectors (Unicode block)
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.
These combining characters are named variation selector-1 through to variation selector-16, and are abbreviated VS1 – VS16. Each applies to the immediately preceding character.
As of Unicode 17.0:
- CJK compatibility ideograph variation sequences contain VS1–VS3
- CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A and B variation sequences contain VS1 and VS2
- Emoji variation sequences contain VS16 for emoji-style or VS15 for text style. 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
- Egyptian Hieroglyphs variation sequences VS1–VS7 are used to rotate specific signs
- VS8–VS14 are not used for any variation sequences