How to Use the SymbolFYI Symbol Table Tool

The Symbol Table is SymbolFYI's most comprehensive browsing interface. Rather than searching for a specific character you already know, the Symbol Table lets you explore Unicode space visually — scrolling through hundreds of characters at once, narrowing by block or category, and clicking any glyph for its full encoding breakdown. This guide walks through every feature of the tool so you can get the most out of it.

What the Symbol Table Does

At its core, the Symbol Table presents Unicode characters in a dense grid, grouped and filterable by the way Unicode itself organizes them. Instead of memorizing code points or entity names, you can browse visually the way you would browse a physical character reference book — except it's interactive, copyable, and linked to full encoding detail for every character.

The tool is particularly useful when you know roughly what kind of character you need but not its exact name or code point. Looking for some kind of arrow? A currency symbol you've seen in a document? A mathematical operator that looks like what you need? The Symbol Table is where you start.

Navigating by Unicode Block

Unicode divides its 154,000-character space into named blocks — contiguous ranges of code points that typically contain related characters. The Symbol Table exposes these blocks as the primary navigation layer.

Along the left sidebar (or in the block dropdown on smaller screens), you'll see a list of Unicode blocks such as:

• Basic Latin (U+0000–U+007F) — the original ASCII set
• General Punctuation (U+2000–U+206F) — typographic punctuation and spaces
• Mathematical Operators (U+2200–U+22FF) — symbols for math notation
• Currency Symbols (U+20A0–U+20CF) — official currency signs
• Arrows (U+2190–U+21FF) — directional arrows in all orientations
• Dingbats (U+2700–U+27BF) — decorative marks and bullets
• CJK Unified Ideographs (U+4E00–U+9FFF) — over 20,000 Chinese/Japanese/Korean characters

Clicking any block name loads that block's characters into the main grid. The block name and code point range appear at the top of the grid so you always know where you are in Unicode space.

Block Range Indicator

Beside each block name in the sidebar, a small indicator shows how many characters SymbolFYI has data for in that block. Some blocks are fully populated; others show a subset of the most commonly used characters. The full Unicode block is always noted for reference even when only a curated selection is displayed.

Filtering by Category

Within a block, characters often span multiple functional categories. The category filter bar at the top of the grid lets you narrow further. Categories include groups like Punctuation, Symbols, Letters, Marks, Numbers, Separators, and Others — these correspond directly to Unicode's General Category property assigned to every code point.

You can combine block and category filters simultaneously. For example, selecting the Latin Extended Additional block and then filtering for Letters will show you only letter characters in that block, hiding the combining marks and punctuation that also live there.

The category filter labels show a live count — "Letters (34)" — so you can immediately see how many characters survive each filter before you click.

The Character Grid

The main grid displays each character as a clickable tile. Each tile shows:

• The rendered glyph at a large size (typically 32px or larger)
• The Unicode code point in hexadecimal below the glyph (e.g., U+2665)
• A subtle hover state that previews the character name

Characters that your operating system's fonts cannot render appear as a small rectangle — known as tofu. This is a font coverage issue, not a data issue; the character exists in Unicode and SymbolFYI has its data, but your system lacks a font with that glyph. The character detail panel will still show full encoding information.

Grid Density Options

A density toggle in the toolbar lets you switch between compact (more characters per row, smaller tiles) and comfortable (fewer per row, larger tiles) display modes. Compact mode is useful for surveying a large block quickly. Comfortable mode is better for visually distinguishing similar characters, such as comparing different dash or hyphen variants.

Keyboard Navigation

The Symbol Table supports full keyboard navigation so you can move through characters without reaching for the mouse:

• Arrow keys — move the selection highlight one character in any direction
• Enter — open the character detail panel for the currently selected character
• Escape — close the detail panel and return focus to the grid
• / (forward slash) — jump focus to the search/filter input
• Page Down / Page Up — scroll the grid by one visible screen

The currently focused tile is highlighted with a visible ring so you always know where keyboard focus is. This makes the Symbol Table fully usable without a mouse and compatible with assistive technologies.

The Character Detail Panel

Clicking any character tile (or pressing Enter on a focused tile) opens the character detail panel. This panel is the same rich encoding view you'd find on a dedicated symbol page, but surfaced inline so you don't lose your place in the grid.

Encoding Information

The detail panel shows the character in all common encoding representations:

Each row in the encoding table has its own copy button so you can grab exactly the format your workflow needs without having to convert anything manually.

Unicode Properties

Below the encoding table, the detail panel lists the character's Unicode properties:

• Name: The official Unicode character name (e.g., COPYRIGHT SIGN)
• General Category: The Unicode category code and label (e.g., So — Other Symbol)
• Block: Which Unicode block the character belongs to
• Script: The writing system (Latin, Common, Han, etc.)
• Combining Class: Relevant for combining marks; 0 for base characters
• Bidirectional Class: How the character behaves in right-to-left text rendering
• Decomposition: Whether the character has a canonical or compatibility decomposition

Navigation Within the Panel

At the top of the detail panel, Previous and Next buttons let you step through characters in code point order without closing the panel. This is especially useful for comparing adjacent characters in a block — stepping through the various dash characters (U+2010 through U+2015) to see how they differ visually and in name.

Copy to Clipboard

Every character can be copied in several ways:

From the grid tile — a small copy icon appears on hover, copying the raw character to clipboard with one click.

From the detail panel — use the row-level copy buttons in the encoding table to copy any specific format (raw character, HTML entity, CSS escape, etc.).

From the code point input — if you know a code point, you can type it directly into the code point input at the top of the tool. The grid will jump to that character and open the detail panel automatically.

After any copy action, a brief confirmation toast appears ("Copied!") that disappears after two seconds so it never blocks the interface.

Practical Use Cases

Finding a Special Character You Vaguely Remember

You saw a character in a document — something like a pointing hand or a checkmark in a box — but you don't know its name. Navigate to likely blocks (Dingbats, Miscellaneous Symbols, Geometric Shapes) and browse the grid visually until you spot it. Click to confirm its name and code point.

Exploring an Unfamiliar Unicode Block

Working with Arabic text and curious what the Arabic Presentation Forms blocks contain? Navigate there and scroll through the characters. The category filter helps distinguish letters from punctuation from marks. The detail panel's bidirectionality property confirms how characters will render in RTL context.

Comparing Similar-Looking Characters

Dash-like characters are a classic example of Unicode ambiguity: there's the hyphen-minus (U+002D), the hyphen (U+2010), the non-breaking hyphen (U+2011), the figure dash (U+2012), the en dash (U+2013), and the em dash (U+2014). Navigate to General Punctuation, enable keyboard navigation, and step through them one by one to see each character's name and encoding. The visual difference may be subtle; the semantic and encoding differences are significant.

Preparing HTML Content

You need a copyright notice with the proper copyright symbol, not typed text. Navigate to General Punctuation or search by name, find © (U+00A9), open the detail panel, and copy the HTML entity ©. The encoding table makes it trivial to grab the exact format your template needs.

Auditing Text for Unusual Characters

If you've pasted text from an external source and suspect it contains unusual whitespace or lookalike characters, paste a substring into the code point input to jump directly to it, or use the Character Analyzer tool (accessible from the detail panel) for a full per-character audit.

Combining the Symbol Table with Other Tools

The Symbol Table works well as a discovery layer that feeds into other SymbolFYI tools:

• Found a character in the Symbol Table but need all its encoding formats in one view? The Encoding Converter at /tools/encoding-converter/ accepts any character or code point and displays the full conversion table.
• Suspicious that a pasted text contains multiple lookalike characters? The Character Analyzer at /tools/character-counter/ breaks text apart character by character and shows the Unicode name for each one.
• Working on a web project and need just the HTML entity? The detail panel links directly to the character's symbol page, which includes entity codes and CSS usage examples.

Tips for Power Users

Bookmark a block — the URL updates when you select a block (e.g., /tools/symbol-table/?block=arrows), so you can bookmark your most-visited blocks for instant access.

Use the detail panel's code point links — any code point displayed in the panel is a link. Click it to navigate to that character's dedicated symbol page with deeper context, usage examples, and related characters.

Filter for "Other" category to find combining marks — many Unicode blocks contain combining marks (category Mn) that render differently from what the tile preview shows. Filtering for the Marks category and examining the combining class property helps you understand how these characters attach to base characters.

The Symbol Table is designed to make the breadth of Unicode accessible without requiring you to know Unicode already. Start exploring a block that interests you, use the filters to narrow the field, and let the detail panel handle the encoding details.