Mathematical Symbols in Unicode: A Complete Reference

Mathematics has one of the richest symbol systems of any human activity, and Unicode provides comprehensive coverage — from the basic arithmetic operators you learned in school to specialized notation used in logic, set theory, calculus, and abstract algebra. This reference maps the major Unicode blocks for mathematical symbols, provides categorized tables, and shows how to use math symbols correctly in HTML, CSS, and code.

Unicode Blocks for Mathematical Symbols

Mathematical symbols are spread across several Unicode blocks. Knowing which block a symbol belongs to makes it easier to find using lookup tools.

Core Math Blocks

Arrow Blocks

Miscellaneous Math Blocks

Arithmetic and Basic Operators

The most frequently used mathematical operators:

Important: Always use U+2212 MINUS SIGN (−) rather than U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS (-) in mathematical text. They are visually similar but semantically distinct.

Set Theory

Logic

Calculus and Analysis

Greek Letters Used in Mathematics

Greek letters are the standard notation for many mathematical constants and variables. They live in the Basic Multilingual Plane within the Greek and Coptic block (U+0370–U+03FF):

Note: U+03A9 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA and U+2126 OHM SIGN are both rendered as Ω but are different code points. Use U+2126 when the meaning is specifically the unit of electrical resistance; use U+03A9 in mathematical contexts.

LaTeX to Unicode Mapping

For developers migrating from LaTeX to Unicode, or building systems that need to convert between the two:

Using Math Symbols in HTML and CSS

Direct Unicode characters

The cleanest approach in modern HTML is to use math symbols directly as Unicode characters, with the document declared as UTF-8:

<meta charset="UTF-8">
<p>The area of a circle is A = πr²</p>
<p>For all ε > 0, there exists δ > 0 such that...</p>

HTML numeric entities

When you cannot use UTF-8 directly, or for clarity in source code:

∀x ∈ ℝ: x ≥ 0 ⇒ √x ∈ ℝ
<!-- ∀x ∈ ℝ: x ≥ 0 ⇒ √x ∈ ℝ -->

CSS content property

For inserting math symbols as CSS-generated content (use sparingly — screen readers may not handle this well):

.definition::before {
  content: '\2200';  /* ∀ */
}
.proof-end::after {
  content: '\220E';  /* ∎ QED square */
}

MathML

For complex mathematical expressions, MathML is the semantically correct choice and is now supported natively in all major browsers:

<math>
  <mrow>
    <msup><mi>e</mi><mrow><mi>i</mi><mi>π</mi></mrow></msup>
    <mo>+</mo>
    <mn>1</mn>
    <mo>=</mo>
    <mn>0</mn>
  </mrow>
</math>

When to use math fonts

For display mathematics with proper spacing and sizing, consider loading a mathematical font. The STIX Two Math and Latin Modern Math fonts provide extensive coverage of the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block (U+1D400–U+1D7FF), which includes bold, italic, script, Fraktur, and double-struck variants of every letter.

Use the SymbolFYI Symbol Table tool to browse the Mathematical Operators block visually, and the Unicode Lookup tool to find any specific symbol by name or description.