Fancy letters from A to Z

Each row is one capital in five styles. On a phone, press and hold a letter to select it; on a computer, drag across it. Letters that come from an older Unicode set are explained further down.

Small caps have a single size, so one set does the job of both: ᴀ ʙ ᴄ ᴅ ᴇ ꜰ ɢ ʜ ɪ ᴊ ᴋ ʟ ᴍ ɴ ᴏ ᴘ ǫ ʀ ꜱ ᴛ ᴜ ᴠ ᴡ x ʏ ᴢ. The q is a stand-in and the x is an ordinary x, for reasons covered in the questions below.

Numbers exist in only two of these sets: outline (𝟘 𝟙 𝟚 𝟛 𝟜 𝟝 𝟞 𝟟 𝟠 𝟡) and bubble (⓪ ① ② ③ ④ ⑤ ⑥ ⑦ ⑧ ⑨). Cursive, bold cursive, Old English and small caps leave digits as they are.

Run down the charts and a few letters stand slightly apart: ℬ ℰ ℱ ℋ ℐ ℒ ℳ ℛ and ℯ ℊ ℴ in cursive, ℭ ℌ ℑ ℜ ℨ in Old English, and ℂ ℍ ℕ ℙ ℚ ℝ ℤ in outline. They are older characters from Unicode's Letterlike Symbols block. When the maths alphabets were added in 2001, Unicode left gaps where these letters already existed, and generators fill the gaps with the older versions.

They were there first because mathematicians already needed them. ℕ, ℤ, ℚ, ℝ and ℂ are the standard symbols for the natural numbers, the integers, the rational numbers, the real numbers and the complex numbers. ℜ and ℑ stand for the real and imaginary parts of a complex number.

Living in a different block means some phones draw them with a different font from their neighbours, so ℝ can look a touch heavier, or ℭ a little taller, than the letters around it.

Tip: Need a monogram where every letter matches? Use bold cursive: all 52 of its letters come from one set, with no stand-ins.

A single fancy capital is the most readable way to use these letters. 𝒮 & 𝒥 works as a couple's monogram on a wedding post, 𝕊 & 𝕁 gives the same pair a sporty look, and a lone 𝓐 can stand in for a logo on a shop's posts.

Keep a fancy initial as its own word rather than gluing it to a plain one. In “𝔗he summer we met”, search sees an unfamiliar character followed by “he”, and a screen reader may read the capital out by its full Unicode name before carrying on. Written as a separate initial, the same letter breaks nothing.

Fancy alphabets only cover the 26 basic letters. Accented letters such as é, ñ, ü and ç have no fancy versions, so the generator leaves them as they are: Zoë and José come out as 𝒵ℴë and 𝒥ℴ𝓈é in cursive, with the plain ë and é standing out. Letters from other alphabets, such as Greek, Cyrillic or Devanagari, pass through unchanged.

• Keep the name plain and style a word next to it instead, such as a title or a sign-off.
• Drop the accent only if the person is happy with that. For many names the accent matters.
• For a careful fix, convert the letter without its accent and type a combining accent after it (for é, U+0301). Phones place accents on fancy letters unpredictably, so check the result on more than one device.