Chess symbols in Unicode
From HandWiki
Short description: Text characters representing chess pieces
Font depictions of Unicode chess symbols (in the same order as the table). 1st: DejaVu Sans; 2nd: FreeSerif; 3rd: Quivira; 4th: Pecita.
GNU Chess using Unicode chess characters to display a chess board in the terminal.
Chess symbols are part of Unicode. Instead of using images, one can represent chess pieces by characters that are defined in the Unicode character set. This makes it possible to:
- Use figurine algebraic notation, which replaces the letter that stands for a piece by its symbol, e.g. ♘c6 instead of Nc6. This enables the moves to be read independent of language (the letter abbreviations of pieces in algebraic notation vary from language to language).
- Produce the symbols using a text editor or word processor rather than a graphics editor.
In order to display or print these symbols, a device must have one or more fonts with good Unicode support installed, and the document (Web page, word processor document, etc.) it is displaying must use one of these fonts.[1]
Unicode version 12.0 has allocated a whole character block at 0x1FA00 for inclusion of extra chess piece representations. This standard points to several new characters being created in this block,[2]including rotated pieces and neutral (neither white nor black) pieces.
Unicode characters
In Unicode, chess symbols are in two groups:
- Regular chess symbols, the basic six pieces in black and white (as part of Unicode block Miscellaneous Symbols), and
- Uncommon and fairy chess pieces and xiangqi pieces, in a block named Chess Symbols.
The basic 12 chess pieces
| Name | Symbol | Code point | HTML (decimal) | HTML (hex) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| white chess king | Template:Chess Unicode | U+2654 | ♔ | ♔ |
| white chess queen | Template:Chess Unicode | U+2655 | ♕ | ♕ |
| white chess rook | Template:Chess Unicode | U+2656 | ♖ | ♖ |
| white chess bishop | Template:Chess Unicode | U+2657 | ♗ | ♗ |
| white chess knight | Template:Chess Unicode | U+2658 | ♘ | ♘ |
| white chess pawn | Template:Chess Unicode | U+2659 | ♙ | ♙ |
| black chess king | Template:Chess Unicode | U+265A | ♚ | ♚ |
| black chess queen | Template:Chess Unicode | U+265B | ♛ | ♛ |
| black chess rook | Template:Chess Unicode | U+265C | ♜ | ♜ |
| black chess bishop | Template:Chess Unicode | U+265D | ♝ | ♝ |
| black chess knight | Template:Chess Unicode | U+265E | ♞ | ♞ |
| black chess pawn | Template:Chess Unicode | U+265F | ♟ | ♟ |
Fairy chess pieces and xiangqi pieces
Chessboard using Unicode
References
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