Line Symbols
Tap a line to copy it. Box-drawing lines, dashes and block lines look alike but behave differently in fonts, chat apps and screen readers.
By Maya Chen, lettering designer and type educator · Checked by Jordan Hale · · How we review content
Box-drawing lines
Horizontal lines from the Box Drawing block. They join end to end in monospace fonts.
Dashes and long lines
Typographic dashes and line extensions.
Low, high and wavy lines
Lines that sit at the bottom or top of the text line, and wavy ones.
Vertical lines
Bars for separators and columns.
32 symbols on this page. Names are the official Unicode character names; "emoji" marks characters that often appear as colour pictures on phones.
Four families of line
A line of text can come from at least four places in Unicode, and the reason one looks right and another looks broken is mostly down to which family it comes from.
The first family is box drawing, a block of 128 characters, U+2500 to U+257F, inherited from old text-mode terminals. ─ (LIGHT HORIZONTAL), ━ (HEAVY HORIZONTAL) and ═ (DOUBLE HORIZONTAL) are the best known, and the dashed versions ┄ ┈ ┅ ┉ ╌ come in light and heavy weights with two, three or four dashes. They were built to join into tables and frames. The second family is punctuation dashes: the hyphen, en dash, em dash and longer ones such as ⸺ (TWO-EM DASH) and ⸻ (THREE-EM DASH). The third is block elements and spacing lines such as ▁ (LOWER ONE EIGHTH BLOCK) and ▔ (UPPER ONE EIGHTH BLOCK), which sit at the bottom or top of the character cell. The fourth is the wavy group, ﹏ 〰 ～ and ⁓, which come from East Asian punctuation and mathematics.
Box-drawing lines in practice
In a monospace font, each box-drawing character fills its whole cell, so a row of ─ forms an unbroken line. That is why they work so well in terminals and code blocks. In the proportional fonts used by most messaging and social apps, each character is only as wide as the font decides, and a line can show thin gaps or look slightly different from one device to another. Heavy and double lines usually look more continuous than light ones, because their thickness hides small gaps.
Weight matters visually: ─ is a hairline, ━ is a firm rule, and ═ is two thin lines. For a bio divider, ━ is the strongest. The dashed ones, such as ┄ and ┈, make a dotted rule, and they are often used as a soft divider.
Dashes
The punctuation dashes have a different job. - is the keyboard hyphen. – (EN DASH, U+2013) is for ranges, such as 10–20. — (EM DASH, U+2014) is for a break in a sentence. ― (HORIZONTAL BAR, U+2015) is a quotation dash used in some languages. ‒ (FIGURE DASH) matches the width of a digit, so that phone numbers line up. ⸺ and ⸻ are long rules used in bibliographies to mean “same author as above”. The reason to use these for decoration is that they take the text colour, scale with the font, and join reasonably, though the join is only guaranteed in some fonts. ⎯ (HORIZONTAL LINE EXTENSION) is designed to be joined.
If your goal is punctuation, use the right dash. A hyphen where an en dash belongs is a typographic error, and a box-drawing line where an em dash belongs reads as a design choice at best.
Low, high and wavy lines
_ (LOW LINE) is the underscore. It sits below the baseline, so a row of them forms an underline for a blank. ‗ (DOUBLE LOW LINE) is two stacked. ▁ sits at the bottom of the cell and ▔ at the top, which makes them handy as underlines and overlines for headings in plain text, though neither joins perfectly in every font. ‾ (OVERLINE) is a spacing overline.
The wavy ones are mostly decorative. ﹏ (WAVY LOW LINE) is a low wave from the CJK compatibility block. 〰 (WAVY DASH) is a mid-height wave that phones often draw as an emoji. ～ (FULLWIDTH TILDE) is a wide tilde, and ⁓ (SWUNG DASH) is a swung line used in dictionaries to stand for the headword. On the page, a string of waves gives a ripple, but the width differs between fonts, so test it.
Vertical bars
The keyboard vertical bar, |, is used for choices in code and for pipes. │ (LIGHT VERTICAL) ┃ (HEAVY VERTICAL) and ║ (DOUBLE VERTICAL) are the box-drawing ones, and ¦ (BROKEN BAR) is a bar with a gap. They suit separators between words, such as home | about | contact, in a bio or a text menu. The box-drawing versions only join vertically when the line height equals the font size, which is rare in apps, so use them as single separators rather than as columns.
Which line for which job
| Job | Character | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Bio divider | ━ or ─ | Repeats cleanly, short |
| Sentence break | — | The correct punctuation |
| Number range | – | En dash |
| Underline a blank | _ | Sits on the baseline |
| Separator between words | vertical bar or │ | Short and clear |
| Fancy ripple | ﹏ | Wavy low line |
Typing methods
- Windows Alt codes. On the numeric keypad, hold Alt and type 196 for ─, 205 for ═, 179 for │, 186 for ║ and 45 for -.
- Word. Type 2500 and press Alt then X for ─. Typing three hyphens and pressing Enter draws a border line, and typing two hyphens between words can autocorrect to a dash.
- Mac, US layout. Option and hyphen types –, and Option and Shift and hyphen types —.
- HTML and Markdown. — and – for dashes. Three hyphens, asterisks or underscores on a line alone make a horizontal rule in Markdown, which is better than a typed line.
- Phones. Press and hold the hyphen key for – and —. Box-drawing characters need a symbols keyboard or copy and paste.
Accessibility
Screen readers announce box-drawing characters by name, such as “box drawings light horizontal”, and may repeat it for every character. Dashes are usually read as pauses or silently. For a web page, a real separator or heading is announced as one, and a typed line of fifty characters is announced fifty times unless the reader collapses repeats. Keep decorative lines short. The fancy text accessibility guide goes further.
If you see boxes or gaps
If a line shows as a series of empty boxes, the font lacks the character. Our guide to why fancy text shows boxes lists the usual fixes. For ready-made lines and ornaments, the divider symbols and border symbols pages go together with this page.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between ─, — and -?
Why does my line have gaps in some apps?
How do I type a long horizontal line?
Which line is best for a bio divider?
Do screen readers read line symbols?
Related symbols and tools
- Divider SymbolsTap a line or mark to copy it. Single characters show their Unicode name; the full lines are strings with plain-word labels.
- Border SymbolsTap a corner, line or frame to copy it. The box-drawing characters are real Unicode symbols; the frames are strings with plain-word labels.
- Bullet Point SymbolsTap a bullet to copy it. Each shows its Unicode name, and the page explains which ones survive LinkedIn, resumes and plain-text bios.
- Arrow SymbolsTap an arrow to copy it. Basic, two-way, double, heavy and triangle arrows are grouped, each with its Unicode name and code point.
- Text Symbols to Copy and PasteText symbols are Unicode characters, such as hearts, stars, arrows, check marks and brackets, that you copy and paste into bios, names, messages and documents. Each one shows its Unicode name and code point, so you know exactly what you are pasting and can tell it apart from an emoji.
- Text DecoratorThis text decorator wraps your name in 28 frames such as ꧁ ꧂ and ★彡 彡★, in the letter style you choose. Type a name, filter frames by mood, then tap a row to copy.