U+2016 · Other punctuation
HTML entity
‖
LaTeX
\Vert
Double Vertical Line Symbol ‖
‖ is double vertical line. Write it in HTML as ‖ or paste the character directly. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Other punctuation.
Also known as
Unicode 1.0 called this character double vertical bar. The standard renamed it later, but documents, fonts and font-editing tools from that era still use the old name.
What Unicode says about ‖
used in pairs to indicate norm of a matrix
— annotation from the Unicode Standard, NamesList.txt
Codes & technical data
| Unicode | U+2016 | |
|---|---|---|
| HTML hex | ‖ | |
| HTML decimal | ‖ | |
| CSS | \2016 | |
| JavaScript | \u{2016} | |
| Python | \U00002016 | |
| Java / C# | \u2016 | |
| Rust | \u{2016} | |
| Swift | \u{2016} | |
| PHP | \u{2016} | |
| URL encoded | %E2%80%96 | |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 80 96 | |
| UTF-16 bytes | 2016 | |
| Base64 | 4oCW | |
| Decimal | 8214 | |
| HTML entity | ‖ | |
| LaTeX | \Vert | |
| Category | Other punctuation (Po) | |
| Introduced | Unicode 1.1 | |
Will ‖ survive being pasted?
- Normalisation. Yes. ‖ is unchanged by NFKC, so it survives normalising systems intact.
- Legacy encodings. ‖ is Unicode-only — it has no Latin-1 equivalent, so a system stuck on an 8-bit encoding cannot represent it.
- Size. 3 bytes in UTF-8. Character-limited fields — SMS, bios, some form validators — usually count bytes, not characters.
Unicode cross-references
The standard points readers of ‖ at these characters — usually because they look alike, or because one is the correct choice where the other is often used by mistake.
Other line characters
Unicode names 6 characters ending in “line”. They differ by direction, weight or decoration rather than by meaning.
Nearby in General Punctuation
The typographic marks that word processors quietly substitute for their ASCII lookalikes — real quotation marks, en and em dashes, the ellipsis. It also holds the invisible characters: zero-width spaces, joiners and directional marks that do work without drawing anything.
How to type ‖
| Windows | Type 2016 then press Alt+X |
|---|---|
| macOS | Press Ctrl+Cmd+Space, then search for “double vertical line” |
| Linux | Press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 2016, press Enter |
| HTML | ‖ |
About Unicode’s Other punctuation category
Unicode files this under "other punctuation", the category for marks that are not brackets, dashes or quotes.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I type the ‖ double vertical line symbol?
- On Windows, type 2016 and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 2016. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
- What is the code for ‖?
- Double Vertical Line is U+2016, written in HTML as ‖ and in LaTeX as \Vert. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
- What kind of character is ‖?
- Double Vertical Line is filed under Other punctuation in the General Punctuation block, and was introduced in Unicode 1.1. Unicode files this under "other punctuation", the category for marks that are not brackets, dashes or quotes.