Input Symbols Emoji

A key or button showing special characters: the Japanese postal mark 〒, a music note, an ampersand &, and a percent sign %. It's the "symbols mode" toggle from Japanese phone keyboards, and it's one of the strangest emojis in Unicode because every symbol it displays has its own origin story spanning centuries.

Emojipedia describes it as "a symbol showing the following glyphs: 〒 (Japanese postal mark), 𝅘𝅥𝅮 (music note), & (ampersand, or sometimes @), and % (percentage sign)." Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) under the name INPUT SYMBOL FOR SYMBOLSINPUT SYMBOL FOR SYMBOLS. It's the weirdest sibling in the input emoji family (🔠 uppercase, 🔡 lowercase, 🔢 numbers, 🔣 symbols, 🔤 Latin letters).

The Japanese postal mark 〒 gives it away as a Japanese design artifact. On a Japanese phone, you'd tap this button to access special characters that weren't letters or numbers. Outside Japan, most people see it as a generic "symbols" or "special characters" emoji, used for anything from coding to password reminders to the @#$%! of frustration.

🔣 is the rarest of the five input emojis, and the most interesting. It shows up in a few specific contexts.

First, the coding and developer world. Programmers are surrounded by special characters: {curly braces}{curly braces}, [brackets][brackets], semicolons;semicolons;, &&&& operators, //comments//comments. The emoji works as shorthand for "I'm dealing with code" or "this is technical." The missing semicolon meme is a staple of developer humor, where hours of debugging turn out to be caused by a single missing ;;.

Second, the password context. For years, every website demanded "at least one special character" in your password. In September 2024, NIST officially reversed this guidance, recommending longer passwords instead of complex ones. Their research showed that forcing @#$%@#$% in passwords led to predictable patterns like P@ssw0rd!P@ssw0rd! that were easier to crack, not harder. 🔣 captures the era of password frustration.

Third, the comic-book swearing reference. The string of symbols used to censor profanity in comics (like @#$%&!) has a name: grawlix. The term was coined by Mort Walker, creator of Beetle Bailey, in 1964. The first known grawlix appeared in a 1901 comic strip. 🔣 is basically a grawlix in emoji form.

Fourth, there's a niche but loyal audience that uses 🔣 for typography and design discussions. Each symbol on the emoji has a rich history, and font nerds know it.

Every symbol on this emoji has a story measured in centuries, not decades.

The ampersand & is the oldest. It started as 1st-century Pompeii graffiti, where Roman scribes joined the letters E and T (Latin for "and") into a single ligature. Over 2,000 years of handwriting evolution turned "et" into the & shape we use today. The word "ampersand" itself is a corruption of "and per se and," a phrase schoolchildren recited when the alphabet used to end with & as its 27th character.

The percent sign % emerged from 14th-century Italian merchants who wrote "per cento" (by the hundred), which got abbreviated to "p cento," then "per 100," then "p 100," and eventually the crossed-out circles that became %. Every discount tag at every store in the world uses a symbol designed by medieval Italian traders.

The at sign @ dates to at least 1536, when Florentine merchant Francesco Lapi used it as shorthand for "amphora," a clay jar for measuring wine. It drifted through trade ledgers for centuries as "at the rate of" until Ray Tomlinson repurposed it for email in 1971. He chose @ specifically because nobody else was using it. "I was mostly looking for a symbol that wasn't used much," he said. That one decision attached the @ sign permanently to every email address ever written.

The Japanese postal mark 〒 is the youngest symbol on the emoji, introduced on February 8, 1887. It's a stylized katakana syllable テ (te) from "teishin" (communications). There's a fun origin story: the symbol was supposed to debut as 〒, but the official gazette accidentally printed it as a "T." The error was corrected eight days later, but the confusion persists.

The hash/pound sign # bridges the ancient and modern. It descended from the Roman abbreviation ℔ for "libra pondo" (pound weight), mutated through centuries of handwriting into #, and lived a quiet life on typewriters and phone keypads until August 23, 2007), when Chris Messina tweeted: "How do you feel about using # (pound) for groups?" He didn't patent the idea. The hashtag went on to reshape how the entire internet organizes information.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) under the name INPUT SYMBOL FOR SYMBOLSINPUT SYMBOL FOR SYMBOLS. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. It's the fourth of five consecutive input emojis: 🔠 (U+1F520U+1F520), 🔡 (U+1F521U+1F521), 🔢 (U+1F522U+1F522), 🔣 (U+1F523U+1F523), 🔤 (U+1F524U+1F524). The symbols shown on the emoji vary by platform. Apple shows 〒♪&%, while Google and other platforms may swap the Japanese postal mark for @ or show different arrangements. The inclusion of 〒 on Apple's version is a direct connection to the Japanese phone origins.

1. 79Pompeii graffiti contains the earliest known et-ligature, the ancestor of the ampersand &↗
2. 1300Italian merchants develop the percent sign % from the abbreviation 'per cento' (by the hundred)↗
3. 1536Florentine merchant Francesco Lapi uses @ as shorthand for 'amphora' in a trade letter, the earliest known @ in writing
4. 1887Japan introduces the postal mark 〒, a stylized katakana テ from 'teishin' (communications)↗
5. 1901First known grawlix (comic-strip swearing symbols @#$%!) appears in Gene Carr's Lady Bountiful↗
6. 1962Martin Speckter introduces the interrobang ‽, combining ! and ?, which briefly gains popularity before fading↗
7. 1964Beetle Bailey creator Mort Walker coins the word 'grawlix' for the @#$%! string used to censor profanity in comics↗
8. 1971Ray Tomlinson chooses @ for email addresses because 'nobody else was using it'↗
9. 2007Chris Messina proposes the hashtag on Twitter (August 23). He doesn't patent it. The # goes on to reshape how the internet organizes information↗
10. 2010Unicode 6.0 standardizes U+1F523 INPUT SYMBOL FOR SYMBOLS↗
11. 2024NIST officially reverses guidance on special character requirements for passwords, recommending length over complexity↗

• •The ampersand & started as graffiti on the walls of Pompeii around 79 AD, where Roman scribes joined the letters E and T into a ligature for the Latin word "et" (and). It was the 27th letter of the English alphabet until the early 1800s.
• •The word "ampersand" is a corruption of the phrase "and per se and." Children reciting the alphabet used to end with "X, Y, Z, and per se and." The slurred version became "ampersand" by 1837.
• •The percent sign % evolved from 14th-century Italian merchants writing "per cento" (by the hundred). Through centuries of abbreviation, it became p100, then a symbol with crossed circles.
• •Chris Messina proposed the hashtag on August 23, 2007), tweeting: "How do you feel about using # (pound) for groups?" He chose not to patent it. Twitter initially ignored the suggestion. It went mainstream during the 2007 San Diego forest fires.
• •The Japanese postal mark 〒 debuted on February 8, 1887, but the official gazette accidentally printed it as a plain "T." The correction was issued eight days later. The symbol is a stylized katakana テ (te) from "teishin" (communications).
• •NIST reversed its special character password guidance in 2024. After decades of forcing @#$%@#$% in passwords, research showed complexity requirements led to weaker passwords (P@ssw0rd!P@ssw0rd!) rather than stronger ones. The new standard: minimum 15 characters, no complexity requirements.
• •The string of symbols censoring profanity in comics (@#$%&!) is called a grawlix. The first known grawlix appeared on November 1, 1901 in Gene Carr's Lady Bountiful comic strip.
• •The interrobang ‽, proposed by Martin Speckter in 1962 to combine ! and ?, briefly appeared in typeface catalogs before fading into obscurity. Multiple proposals for sarcasm and irony punctuation marks have failed since the 1580s.
• •Bell Labs assigned the # symbol's name "octothorpe" in 1968, with "octo" for its 8 lines and "thorpe" allegedly honoring Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe.

• •The symbols on 🔣 are too small to read on most devices. Don't assume people can identify the specific characters (〒♪&%). Most users just read it as "special characters" in the abstract.
• •🔣 doesn't mean "math" to most people, even though % and other mathematical operators are special characters. For math, 🧮 or the actual operators work better.
• •Some people see 🔣 and think "grawlix" (censored swearing), while others think "coding." The ambiguity can cause miscommunication. Add context words if your meaning matters.

• •Chris Messina invents the hashtag (2007) — On August 23, 2007), Messina tweeted his proposal to use # for organizing Twitter topics. He deliberately didn't patent it because "they were born of the internet, and owned by no one." The hashtag went mainstream during the San Diego forest fires and eventually changed how every social platform organizes content.
• •Ray Tomlinson's @ and the first email (1971) — Tomlinson needed a symbol to separate usernames from computer names in ARPANET email. He picked @ because nobody was using it for anything. The first email he sent was reportedly just "QWERTYUIOP" as a test. That one symbol selection in 1971 defined how billions of people communicate.
• •Grawlix: 120+ years of comic swearing (1901-present) — The first known use of @#$%&! in comics appeared in Lady Bountiful on November 1, 1901. Mort Walker, creator of Beetle Bailey, coined the term "grawlix" in 1964 and collected it in his 1980 book The Lexicon of Comicana.
• •NIST kills the special character rule (2024) — For decades, every password prompt demanded at least one @#$%@#$%. In 2024, NIST officially reversed this, acknowledging that complexity requirements produced predictable, weaker passwords. The death of P@ssw0rd!P@ssw0rd! was quiet but significant.
• •The missing semicolon meme — In programmer humor, the semicolon ;; is the most feared special character. Entire codebases can break because of one missing semicolon. Python developers, whose language doesn't require semicolons, watch from a safe distance.
• •The interrobang's brief life (1962) — Typographer Martin Speckter's interrobang ‽ (combining ? and !) appeared in Remington typewriters and a few font catalogs before vanishing. It's been joined by a graveyard of failed punctuation marks: the percontation point (1580s), the irony mark (1899), and the snark mark (2007).

• 📰
  November 1, 1901: First known grawlix appears in Gene Carr's Lady Bountiful comic strip
• 📰
  December 14, 1902: The Katzenjammer Kids use grawlix, including an anchor symbol in the swearing
• 📰
  1950: Beetle Bailey debuts. Creator Mort Walker will eventually name the convention
• 📝
  1964: Mort Walker coins the term 'grawlix' in an article for the National Cartoonist Society
• 📕
  1980: Walker publishes The Lexicon of Comicana, collecting grawlix and other comic art terms
• 📖
  2024+: Merriam-Webster recognizes the word. The practice remains standard in print and digital comics

• •The codepoint is U+1F523U+1F523. Shortcodes: :symbols::symbols: (GitHub, Slack). Part of the input family at U+1F520U+1F520 through U+1F524U+1F524.
• •The symbols displayed on 🔣 vary by platform. Apple shows 〒♪&%〒♪&%, while Google has shown different combinations. If you're referencing specific symbols in documentation, use the actual characters, not this emoji.
• •Fun edge case: JavaScript's String.fromCodePoint(0x3012)String.fromCodePoint(0x3012) gives you the Japanese postal mark 〒〒. It's one of the few non-emoji Unicode characters that's culturally specific enough to appear ON an emoji.
• •NIST SP 800-63B (2024) no longer requires special characters in passwords. If you're building auth systems, the new guidance is minimum 15 characters with no composition rules. Length beats P@ssw0rd!P@ssw0rd!.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.