The circled C comes in two forms: capital Ⓒ (U+24B8) and lowercase ⓒ (U+24D2). Click the button above to copy either.
Here’s the thing most pages won’t tell you: neither of these is the official copyright symbol. They belong to the “enclosed alphanumerics” block of Unicode — a full A–Z set inside circles, originally designed for lists and labels. The legal copyright sign is ©, U+00A9, a distinct character.
In practice you’ll see Ⓒ used as a stand-in for © in social bios, video captions, and watermarks, and for that casual use it reads fine. But in a formal copyright notice — a book’s copyright page, a website footer, a contract — use the real ©. If a dispute ever turns on whether you gave proper notice, you don’t want the ambiguity.
When the circled C is the right choice: decorative text, stylized usernames, list markers, or anywhere you want the look without the legal meaning.
Typing it: there’s no keyboard shortcut on Windows or Mac — copy it from this page, or on Windows use the Character Map (search “circled latin capital letter c”). In HTML, use Ⓒ for Ⓒ and ⓒ for ⓒ.
Related: the other letters in this style (ⓐ ⓑ ⓒ …) all live in the same Unicode block, which is why pasting them into most fonts works — the coverage is broad.
/registered-trademark-symbol/ — Title: Registered Trademark Symbol ® — Copy and Paste
The ® (U+00AE) means one specific thing: this trademark is registered with a government trademark office. Copy it above.
That specificity is what separates ® from its neighbors. Anyone can put ™ next to a brand name — it’s a claim, nothing more. The ® is a statement of fact about a completed registration, and using it on a mark that isn’t registered is false marking. In the US that can undermine your own enforcement position, and in some countries it’s an offense. The rule is simple: no registration certificate, no ®.
Where it goes: immediately after the mark, superscript by convention — Acme®, not ® Acme. You don’t need it on every mention; once per page or packaging panel, at the first or most prominent use, is standard practice.
A common trap for international sellers: registration is territorial. A US registration doesn’t make ® accurate in markets where you haven’t registered. Larger companies handle this with footnoted legends (“Acme is a registered trademark of Acme Corp. in the United States and other countries”); small brands are usually fine using ® in the markets they’ve actually registered in.
Typing it:
- Windows: Alt + 0174
- Mac: Option + R
- HTML: ® or ®
- Word: type (r) and it autocorrects
Not registered yet? Use ™ while your application is pending — switching to ® happens the day the registration issues, not the day you file.
/trademark-symbol/ — Title: Trademark Symbol ™ — Copy and Paste
The ™ (U+2122) is the working symbol of brand ownership. Copy it above.
Unlike ®, the ™ requires nothing — no application, no fee, no approval. You attach it to a name, logo, or slogan the moment you start using it commercially and want the world to know you consider it your brand. That’s its entire function: staking a public claim.
It’s not decoration, though. Consistent use of ™ can help establish that you treated the name as a mark from early on, which matters if you later register it or end up in a dispute over who used it first. Brands typically apply it to their name on packaging, websites, and marketing during the years before registration — or forever, in countries where they never register.
™ vs ℠: technically ™ covers goods (things you sell) and ℠ covers services. In practice ™ has become the default for both, and nobody will misread it. Use ℠ if you want to be precise about a service brand.
Typing it:
- Windows: Alt + 0153
- Mac: Option + 2
- HTML: ™ or ™
- Word: type ™ and it converts
Same placement convention as ®: superscript, immediately after the mark, first prominent use.
/service-mark-symbol/ — Title: Service Mark Symbol ℠ — Copy and Paste
The ℠ (U+2120) is the service-industry counterpart to ™. Copy it above.
Trademark law distinguishes between marks used on goods and marks used for services. A coffee brand on a bag of beans is a trademark; the name of the café chain serving it is a service mark. The legal protection works the same way — the distinction is about what the brand identifies. Airlines, banks, consultancies, streaming platforms, delivery services: all service marks, strictly speaking.
In the wild, ℠ is rare. Most service businesses just use ™, and that’s perfectly acceptable — no one loses rights by using the broader symbol. Reach for ℠ when precision is the point: legal documents, brand guidelines, or industries where the convention persists (US professional services especially).
Once a service mark is registered, it takes ® like any other mark — ℠ is only for the unregistered stage.
Typing it: no standard keyboard shortcut exists on any platform, which partly explains why ™ won. Copy it from this page, or use ℠ in HTML. On Windows, Character Map has it under “letterlike symbols.”
/sound-recording-copyright-symbol/ — Title: ℗ Symbol — Sound Recording Copyright, Copy and Paste
The ℗ (U+2117) is the copyright notice for sound recordings — the P stands for phonogram. Copy it above.
Music involves two separate copyrights, and this symbol exists because of that split. The composition — melody, lyrics, arrangement — is one work, marked with ©. The recording of a performance of that composition is a second, independent work, and its notice uses ℗. That’s why the fine print on a release often shows both lines with different owners:
℗ 2026 Meridian Records © 2026 Meridian Music Publishing
The label owns the recording; the publisher owns the song. Cover versions make the distinction obvious: every cover of the same song has its own ℗ (each recording is new) while the © composition credit stays with the original writer’s publisher.
If you self-release music, you typically own both and your distributor will ask for both lines — usually your artist name or imprint for each. The year is the year that recording was first released, which is why remasters carry updated ℗ dates.
Typing it: no keyboard shortcut on Windows or Mac. Copy from this page, or use ℗ in HTML. Don’t substitute a (P) in parentheses on official releases — streaming platforms and pressing plants expect the real character.
/copyleft-symbol/ — Title: Copyleft Symbol 🄯 — Copy and Paste
The copyleft symbol 🄯 (U+1F12F) is the © flipped backwards — and that mirror image is the whole idea. Copy it above.
Copyleft is a licensing strategy that uses copyright law to keep work open instead of closed. A copyleft license (the GPL for software, Creative Commons ShareAlike for creative work) says: use this freely, modify it, redistribute it — but anything you build from it must carry the same freedoms. The reversed C became the informal badge of that inversion.
Worth being clear about what the symbol does legally: nothing. There is no “copyleft protection” you invoke by displaying it. The actual mechanism is the license text you attach to your work; the symbol just signals the philosophy. If you want your work under copyleft terms, pick a license (GPL, CC BY-SA) and state it — with or without the 🄯.
Display warning: this character joined Unicode in 2018, much later than the other symbols on this site, and font support is still patchy. On systems without a matching glyph it renders as a box or question mark. For anything user-facing, test it, or use an SVG image instead.
Typing it: copy from this page or use 🔯 in HTML. No keyboard shortcuts exist.
/section-symbol/ — Title: Section Symbol § — Copy and Paste
The § (U+00A7) marks numbered sections of legal and technical documents. Copy it above.
Read any statute, contract, or court filing and you’ll hit it immediately: “17 U.S.C. § 512” means Title 17 of the United States Code, section 512. Doubled, it refers to a range or multiple sections — §§ 101–105. The symbol’s name is the “section sign,” though you’ll occasionally see the old typographic term silcrow.
Usage conventions worth knowing:
- A space goes between § and the number: § 512, not §512 (most legal style guides, including Bluebook)
- Never start a sentence with the symbol — write out “Section 512” instead
- Outside the US and UK, several European countries use § as the standard reference mark for statutes and even in everyday writing about rules and regulations
Typing it:
- Windows: Alt + 0167
- Mac: Option + 6
- HTML: § or §
- On many European keyboard layouts it has its own key
If you cite law regularly, learning the alt code pays for itself — this is one of the few special characters lawyers type daily. Its companion in legal drafting is the pilcrow ¶, which does the same job for paragraphs.
/pilcrow-symbol/ — Title: Pilcrow ¶ — Paragraph Symbol Copy and Paste
The ¶ (U+00B6) is the pilcrow — the paragraph mark. Copy it above.
You’ve seen it in two very different places. In legal citation, it references numbered paragraphs the way § references sections: “Complaint ¶ 14” points to paragraph fourteen of a filing. And in word processors, it’s the formatting mark that appears when you click Show/Hide (that backwards-P button in Word’s toolbar) — every ¶ on screen marks where a paragraph break lives in the document.
The character predates print. Medieval scribes used early forms of the pilcrow to mark where a new train of thought began, back when text ran continuously to save parchment. The indented paragraph eventually replaced it in running text — the mark disappeared, the white space stayed. Typographers still occasionally revive it as a decorative section divider.
Practical uses today:
- Legal writing: citing numbered paragraphs (¶ singular, ¶¶ for ranges)
- Editing and proofreading: marking where a paragraph break should be inserted
- Word processing: troubleshooting layout problems by revealing hidden formatting
Typing it:
- Windows: Alt + 0182
- Mac: Option + 7
- HTML: ¶ or ¶
In Word, the toolbar ¶ button toggles formatting marks — it doesn’t insert the character. To type an actual pilcrow in your text, use the alt code or paste it from here.