Once a Unicode character has been officially assigned, it will remain part of the standard for all eternity and some of its most critical properties, particularly those related to normalisation, are set in stone (cf. Unicode Character Encoding Stability Policies). If a character is found to be seriously defective in a way that cannot be fixed by updated properties, algorithms or documentation, the only possible course of action is to deprecate it.
The use of characters that possess the Deprecated property is strongly discouraged. Sometimes there exist alternative characters or character sequences without problematic properties that can be used in their stead; sometimes a character is so fundamentally broken that the entire concept should be eschewed altogether. Deprecated characters remain valid code points and their exchange is not prohibited. It might even be required to support them for compatibility with certain systems.
Curiously, Unicode employs a two‐tier system for deprecation. Several characters are marked as defective and/or discouraged throughout the standard and its associated charts and data files without actually being formally deprecated in the Unicode Character Database. These characters are also listed on this page for completeness.
Sources: Prop
Currently Deprecated
These characters possess the Deprecated property in the most recent version of the Unicode Standard.
| Character | Added | Deprecated | Preferred Representation | Notes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0149 | ʼn | Latin Small Letter N Preceded by Apostrophe | 1.1 | 5.2 | 2019 006E | ’n |
Compatibility decomposition mapping uses U+02BC ʼ Modifier Letter Apostrophe as the apostrophe, but U+2019 ’ Right Single Quotation Mark is now the preferred character to represent that punctuation mark. Originally encoded for compatibility with ISO/IEC 6937. Source: L2/08‐287 |
| 0673 | ٳ | Arabic Letter Alef with Wavy Hamza Below | 1.1 | 6.0 | 0627 065F | اٟ |
U+065F ◌ٟ Arabic Wavy Hamza Below was encoded after it was discovered that alef is not the only letter making use of this diacritic. Source: L2/09‐176 |
| 0F77 | ཷ | Tibetan Vowel Sign Vocalic Rr | 2.0 | 5.2 | 0FB2 0F71 0F80 | ྲཱྀ |
Compatibility equivalents whose decomposition mappings include U+0F81 ◌ཱྀ Tibetan Vowel Sign Reversed Ii, which itself is weakly deprecated and can never appear in normalised text. Source: L2/01‐301 |
| 0F79 | ཹ | Tibetan Vowel Sign Vocalic Ll | 2.0 | 5.2 | 0FB3 0F71 0F80 | ླཱྀ | |
| 17A3 | ឣ | Khmer Independent Vowel Qaq | 3.0 | 4.0 | 17A2 | អ |
Duplicate phantom characters originally intended for transliterating Pali and Sanskrit. Source: L2/02‐097 |
| 17A4 | ឤ | Khmer Independent Vowel Qaa | 3.0 | 5.2 | 17A2 17B6 | អា | |
| 206A | | Inhibit Symmetric Swapping | 1.1 | 3.2 |
Originally intended for a stateful mechanism inherited from ISO/IEC 10646 to toggle bidirectional mirroring. On by default. Source: L2/01‐301 |
||
| 206B | | Activate Symmetric Swapping | 1.1 | 3.2 | |||
| 206C | | Inhibit Arabic Form Shaping | 1.1 | 3.2 |
Originally intended for a stateful mechanism inherited from ISO/IEC 10646 to toggle Arabic presentation forms participating in cursive joining behaviour like regular letters do. Off by default. Source: L2/01‐301 |
||
| 206D | | Activate Arabic Form Shaping | 1.1 | 3.2 | |||
| 206E | | National Digit Shapes | 1.1 | 3.2 |
Originally intended for a stateful mechanism inherited from ISO/IEC 10646 to toggle ASCII digits U+0030 through U+0039 being displayed with alternate, script‐specific glyphs instead of their normal appearance. Off (nominal shapes) by default. Source: L2/01‐301 |
||
| 206F | | Nominal Digit Shapes | 1.1 | 3.2 | |||
| 2329 | 〈 | Left-Pointing Angle Bracket | 1.1 | 5.2 | 27E8 | ⟨ |
U+2329 and U+232A are canonically equivalent to U+3008 〈 Left Angle Bracket and U+3009 〉 Right Angle Bracket respectively – CJK characters with properties unsuited to non‐ideographic contexts. Source: L2/01‐317 |
| 232A | 〉 | Right-Pointing Angle Bracket | 1.1 | 5.2 | 27E9 | ⟩ | |
| E0001 | | Language Tag | 3.1 | 5.1 |
A mechanism for tagging language information in plain text was introduced to prevent the disruptive Internet Draft Multi‐Lingual String Format (MLSF) from progressing and then quickly abandoned because of severe architectural issues. In Unicode 15.0, said mechanism was completely removed from the core standard. Sources: RFC 6082, email from Doug Ewell (2003‑10‑21), email from Martin J. Dürst (2019‑01‑29) |
||
| Character | Added | Deprecated | Preferred Representation | Notes | |||
Formerly Deprecated
These characters had previously possessed the Deprecated property, but that decision has since been reverted. Use of some of these characters may still be discouraged, and some may be canonically equivalent to their preferred representation.
| Character | Added | Deprecated | Undeprecated | Preferred Representation | Notes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0340 | ̀ | Combining Grave Tone Mark | 1.1 | 3.2 | 5.2 | 0300 | ̀ |
Canonical equivalents. Originally intended for Vietnamese. |
| 0341 | ́ | Combining Acute Tone Mark | 1.1 | 3.2 | 5.2 | 0301 | ́ | |
| 17D3 | ៓ | Khmer Sign Bathamasat | 3.0 | 4.0 | 5.2 |
A full set of preassembled lunar date symbols now exists in the Khmer Symbols block. U+17D3 therefore no longer serves a purpose. Source: Khmer chart |
||
| E0020 | | Tag Space | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 |
The language tagging mechanism that these characters were originally encoded for is no longer part of the standard, but the tags were later repurposed for emoji sequences representing regional flags. Only tags corresponding to small letters and digits, as well as U+E007F are currently in use. See Unicode Technical Standard #51: Unicode Emoji for more information. Sources: The Unicode Standard, section 23.9: Tag Characters, Tags chart |
||
| E0021 | | Tag Exclamation Mark | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0022 | | Tag Quotation Mark | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0023 | | Tag Number Sign | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0024 | | Tag Dollar Sign | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0025 | | Tag Percent Sign | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0026 | | Tag Ampersand | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0027 | | Tag Apostrophe | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0028 | | Tag Left Parenthesis | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0029 | | Tag Right Parenthesis | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E002A | | Tag Asterisk | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E002B | | Tag Plus Sign | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E002C | | Tag Comma | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E002D | | Tag Hyphen-Minus | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E002E | | Tag Full Stop | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E002F | | Tag Solidus | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0030 | | Tag Digit Zero | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0031 | | Tag Digit One | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0032 | | Tag Digit Two | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0033 | | Tag Digit Three | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0034 | | Tag Digit Four | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0035 | | Tag Digit Five | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0036 | | Tag Digit Six | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0037 | | Tag Digit Seven | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0038 | | Tag Digit Eight | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0039 | | Tag Digit Nine | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E003A | | Tag Colon | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E003B | | Tag Semicolon | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E003C | | Tag Less-Than Sign | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E003D | | Tag Equals Sign | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E003E | | Tag Greater-Than Sign | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E003F | | Tag Question Mark | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0040 | | Tag Commercial At | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0041 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter A | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0042 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter B | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0043 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter C | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0044 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter D | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0045 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter E | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0046 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter F | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0047 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter G | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0048 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter H | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0049 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter I | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E004A | | Tag Latin Capital Letter J | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E004B | | Tag Latin Capital Letter K | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E004C | | Tag Latin Capital Letter L | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E004D | | Tag Latin Capital Letter M | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E004E | | Tag Latin Capital Letter N | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E004F | | Tag Latin Capital Letter O | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0050 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter P | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0051 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter Q | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0052 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter R | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0053 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter S | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0054 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter T | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0055 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter U | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0056 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter V | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0057 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter W | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0058 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter X | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0059 | | Tag Latin Capital Letter Y | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E005A | | Tag Latin Capital Letter Z | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E005B | | Tag Left Square Bracket | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E005C | | Tag Reverse Solidus | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E005D | | Tag Right Square Bracket | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E005E | | Tag Circumflex Accent | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E005F | | Tag Low Line | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0060 | | Tag Grave Accent | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0061 | | Tag Latin Small Letter A | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0062 | | Tag Latin Small Letter B | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0063 | | Tag Latin Small Letter C | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0064 | | Tag Latin Small Letter D | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0065 | | Tag Latin Small Letter E | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0066 | | Tag Latin Small Letter F | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0067 | | Tag Latin Small Letter G | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0068 | | Tag Latin Small Letter H | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0069 | | Tag Latin Small Letter I | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E006A | | Tag Latin Small Letter J | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E006B | | Tag Latin Small Letter K | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E006C | | Tag Latin Small Letter L | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E006D | | Tag Latin Small Letter M | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E006E | | Tag Latin Small Letter N | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E006F | | Tag Latin Small Letter O | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0070 | | Tag Latin Small Letter P | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0071 | | Tag Latin Small Letter Q | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0072 | | Tag Latin Small Letter R | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0073 | | Tag Latin Small Letter S | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0074 | | Tag Latin Small Letter T | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0075 | | Tag Latin Small Letter U | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0076 | | Tag Latin Small Letter V | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0077 | | Tag Latin Small Letter W | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0078 | | Tag Latin Small Letter X | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E0079 | | Tag Latin Small Letter Y | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E007A | | Tag Latin Small Letter Z | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E007B | | Tag Left Curly Bracket | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E007C | | Tag Vertical Line | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E007D | | Tag Right Curly Bracket | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E007E | | Tag Tilde | 3.1 | 5.1 | 8.0 | |||
| E007F | | Cancel Tag | 3.1 | 5.1 | 9.0 | |||
| Character | Added | Deprecated | Undeprecated | Preferred Representation | Notes | |||
Unofficially Deprecated
It is recommended that these characters not be used because of various deficiencies as noted in the names list, but they do not possess the Deprecated property and never did. Some may be canonically equivalent to their preferred representation.
| Character | Added | Preferred Representation | Notes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0344 | ̈́ | Combining Greek Dialytika Tonos | 1.1 | 0308 0301 | ̈́ |
Canonical equivalents. Sources: Combining Diacritical Marks chart, Greek and Coptic chart |
| 037E | ; | Greek Question Mark | 1.1 | 003B | ; | |
| 0387 | · | Greek Ano Teleia | 1.1 | 00B7 | · | |
| 0478 | Ѹ | Cyrillic Capital Letter Uk | 1.1 | 041E 0443 | Оу |
Preferred representation depends on whether the “digraph onik” or “monograph uk” form is desired. Sources: Cyrillic chart, L2/15‐014 |
| A64A | Ꙋ | |||||
| 0479 | ѹ | Cyrillic Small Letter Uk | 1.1 | 043E 0443 | оу | |
| A64B | ꙋ | |||||
| 0675 | ٵ | Arabic Letter High Hamza Alef | 1.1 | 0674 0627 | ٴا |
Compatibility decompositions are defective, placing U+0674 ٴ Arabic Letter High Hamza after the respective base letter when it should come before. Sources: The Unicode Standard, section 9.2.5: Combining Hamza, Arabic chart |
| 0676 | ٶ | Arabic Letter High Hamza Waw | 1.1 | 0674 0648 | ٴو | |
| 0677 | ٷ | Arabic Letter U with Hamza Above | 1.1 | 0674 06C7 | ٴۇ | |
| 0678 | ٸ | Arabic Letter High Hamza Yeh | 1.1 | 0674 0649 | ٴى | |
| 06E1 | ۡ | Arabic Small High Dotless Head of Khah | 1.1 | 0652 | ْ |
A font variant. Source: Arabic chart |
| 0953 | ॓ | Devanagari Grave Accent | 1.1 | 0300 | ̀ |
Never intended for Devanagari but actually for Latin where they are redundant. Source: Devanagari chart |
| 0954 | ॔ | Devanagari Acute Accent | 1.1 | 0301 | ́ | |
| 0AF1 | ૱ | Gujarati Rupee Sign | 4.0 | 0AB0 0AC2 0AF0 | રૂ૰ |
U+0AF0 ૰ Gujarati Abbreviation Sign hadn’t been encoded yet when U+0AF1 was introduced. Sources: Gujarati chart, L2/09‐330 |
| 0F73 | ཱི | Tibetan Vowel Sign Ii | 2.0 | 0F71 0F72 | ཱི |
Canonical equivalents. Source: Tibetan chart |
| 0F75 | ཱུ | Tibetan Vowel Sign Uu | 2.0 | 0F71 0F74 | ཱུ | |
| 0F81 | ཱྀ | Tibetan Vowel Sign Reversed Ii | 2.0 | 0F71 0F80 | ཱྀ | |
| 17A8 | ឨ | Khmer Independent Vowel Quk | 3.0 | 17A7 1780 | ឧក |
An obsolete ligature. Source: Khmer chart |
| 17D8 | ៘ | Khmer Sign Beyyal | 3.0 | 17D4 179B 17D4 | ។ល។ |
Other abbreviations with the same meaning of “et cetera” exist. Source: Khmer chart |
| 20A4 | ₤ | Lira Sign | 1.1 | 00A3 | £ |
Not widely used. Source: Currency Symbols chart |
| 2126 | Ω | Ohm Sign | 1.1 | 03A9 | Ω |
Canonical equivalents. Source: Letterlike Symbols chart |
| 212B | Å | Angstrom Sign | 1.1 | 00C5 | Å | |
| 2DF5 | ⷵ | Combining Cyrillic Letter Es-Te | 5.1 | 2DED 2DEE | ⷭⷮ |
Combining Cyrillic letters when used in sequence are generally intended to stack horizontally rather than vertically, making U+2DF5 redundant. Sources: Cyrillic Extended‑A chart, L2/15‐002, L2/15‐014 |
| 301E | 〞 | Double Prime Quotation Mark | 1.1 | 301F | 〟 |
Originally intended as a “double prime” version of U+201D ” Right Double Quotation Mark, but U+301F 〟 Low Double Prime Quotation Mark already fulfills that function. |
| 111C4 | 𑇄 | Sharada Om | 6.1 | 1118F 11180 | 𑆏𑆀 |
Concerns about U+111C4 were raised too late into the development process of Unicode 6.1.0 to remove it from the repertoire. Usage is discouraged until evidence for a Sharada om with an appearance distinct from the sequence <U+1118F, U+11180> is found. Sources: Sharada chart, L2/11‐308, L2/12‐019 |
| 130FA | 𓃺 | Egyptian Hieroglyph E034a | 5.2 | 130F9 | 𓃹 |
Stylistic variants. Source: Egyptian Hieroglyphs chart |
| 1310C | 𓄌 | Egyptian Hieroglyph F013a | 5.2 | 1310B | 𓄋 | |
| 13169 | 𓅩 | Egyptian Hieroglyph G036a | 5.2 | 13168 | 𓅨 | |
| 1316B | 𓅫 | Egyptian Hieroglyph G037a | 5.2 | 1316A | 𓅪 | |
| 1320A | 𓈊 | Egyptian Hieroglyph N025a | 5.2 | 13209 | 𓈉 | |
| 13215 | 𓈕 | Egyptian Hieroglyph N034a | 5.2 | 13214 | 𓈔 | |
| 133A0 | 𓎠 | Egyptian Hieroglyph V030a | 5.2 | 1339F | 𓎟 | |
| 133B2 | 𓎲 | Egyptian Hieroglyph W003a | 5.2 | 133B1 | 𓎱 | |
| Character | Added | Preferred Representation | Notes | |||