Sword Symbols

What Unicode actually offers

The first surprise with sword symbols is that there is not a single sword. The Unicode Standard has ⚔ (CROSSED SWORDS, U+2694), 🗡 (DAGGER KNIFE, U+1F5E1) and the typographic dagger † (DAGGER, U+2020), plus related weapon-themed emoji such as the shield, bow and axe. The upright blade people picture when they search for “sword symbol” is almost always text art assembled from several characters: a hilt, a long line and a tip.

That makes this page a mix of two things. The first group is real single characters you can look up by code point. The second group is strings of several characters, shown with plain-word labels, because calling a string a Unicode name would be wrong.

Crossed swords versus the dagger

⚔ appeared in Unicode in the Miscellaneous Symbols block and is the most useful one for names and bios, because it is symmetrical and readable at small sizes. Phones usually draw it as an emoji, which brings colour, while a desktop browser tends to draw a flat black version. The invisible variation selectors can request either form, but support varies.

† and ‡ are older and very reliable. Typographers use † for footnotes. Gamers use it as a small, sharp mark that sits neatly on the text line, which is why it is common as a prefix or suffix on names. It has no colour emoji form, so it looks the same on every device that has the glyph. ⸸ (TURNED DAGGER) is a rarer variant that is not in every font, so test it before relying on it.

How the text-art swords work

A text sword is a row of characters read from left to right. The ASCII version o==[]::::::::> uses o and = for the pommel and grip, [] for the guard, colons for the blade and > for the tip. It is typed entirely with keyboard characters, so it survives anywhere plain text is allowed.

The fancier versions swap in box-drawing lines and arrows from other Unicode blocks. They look sharper, but they depend on the font. Box-drawing characters are designed to join into continuous lines in a monospace font, and in the proportional fonts of most chat apps the pieces may show small gaps or different heights. The last sword in the second group uses an Arabic letter as a hilt. That trick is common, but Arabic letters change shape depending on their neighbours, so the result can look different from one app to another, and it can also reorder text near it. Use it only where you can check the result.

The practical guidance:

• Keep sword art short, ten characters or fewer for a bio.
• Mix as few character blocks as you can.
• Do not put text-art swords in anything that will be read by a screen reader unless you accept that it will be read aloud piece by piece.

Using swords in gamer names

Swords are one of the most common decorations in nicknames, partly because they suggest combat and partly because crossed swords make a tidy symmetric frame. A name like ⚔ NAME ⚔ is two extra characters on each side, which counts against the length limit of the field. Many games count some symbols as more than one character, and we do not have verified counts for any particular title. Count by trying it.

If a game strips symbols outside basic Latin, the fallback is a plain ASCII frame such as -=NAME=- or x NAME x. The text decorator can wrap a name in several different frames at once, and the arrow symbols page has more pointed shapes for blade tips.

Typing methods

1. Word on Windows. Type 2694 then press Alt and X for ⚔. Type 2020 for †, 2021 for ‡.
2. Windows emoji panel. Windows key plus period, then search sword or dagger.
3. Mac. Search crossed swords in the Character Viewer (Control, Command and Space). On a US keyboard, Option+T types † directly.
4. Phones. Search the emoji keyboard for swords. † is not on the standard emoji keyboards, so use a symbols keyboard or copy it from this page.
5. Linux. Press Control, Shift and U, type 2694 and press Enter in GTK apps.

The text-art swords are strings, so the simplest way to reuse them is the copy button, or to save them in a notes app or text replacement.

Accessibility

A screen reader announces ⚔ as “crossed swords” and † as “dagger”. A text-art blade is announced character by character, for example “letter o, equals, equals, left bracket”, which is noise. Use sword art only as decoration, never as the only way to express something, and put the plain text first. The fancy text accessibility guide explains the wider picture.

Boxes and missing glyphs

If a symbol shows as an empty box, the font does not include it. † and ⚔ are widely covered, 🪓 and 🛡 depend on newer emoji fonts. The boxes guide lists the standard fixes, and the skull symbols page covers the other half of most gaming-name decorations.