# Enclosed Alphanumerics

Enclosed Alphanumerics is a Unicode block of typographical symbols of an alphanumeric within a circle, a bracket or other not-closed enclosure, or ending in a full stop.
It is currently fully allocated. Within the Basic Multilingual Plane, a few additional enclosed numerals are in the Dingbats and the Enclosed CJK Letters and Months blocks. There is also a block with more of these characters in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane named Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement (U+1F100–U+1F1FF), as of Unicode 6.0.

## Purpose

Many of these characters were originally intended for use as bullets for lists. The parenthesized forms are historically based on typewriter approximations of the circled versions. Although these roles have been supplanted by styles and other markup in "rich text" contexts, the characters are included in the Unicode standard "for interoperability with the legacy East Asian character sets and for the occasional text context where such symbols otherwise occur." The Unicode Standard considers these characters to be distinct from characters which are similar in form but specialized in purpose, such as the circled C, P or R characters which are defined as copyright and trademark symbols or the circled a used for an at sign.
A circled s (Ⓢ) was used in documents circa 1900 printed by German missionaries, especially the Basel Mission, in the Malayalam language to denote a ditto mark.

## Block

Enclosed Alphanumerics Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) :
| | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F |
| U+246x | ① | ② | ③ | ④ | ⑤ | ⑥ | ⑦ | ⑧ | ⑨ | ⑩ | ⑪ | ⑫ | ⑬ | ⑭ | ⑮ | ⑯ |
| U+247x | ⑰ | ⑱ | ⑲ | ⑳ | ⑴ | ⑵ | ⑶ | ⑷ | ⑸ | ⑹ | ⑺ | ⑻ | ⑼ | ⑽ | ⑾ | ⑿ |
| U+248x | ⒀ | ⒁ | ⒂ | ⒃ | ⒄ | ⒅ | ⒆ | ⒇ | ⒈ | ⒉ | ⒊ | ⒋ | ⒌ | ⒍ | ⒎ | ⒏ |
| U+249x | ⒐ | ⒑ | ⒒ | ⒓ | ⒔ | ⒕ | ⒖ | ⒗ | ⒘ | ⒙ | ⒚ | ⒛ | ⒜ | ⒝ | ⒞ | ⒟ |
| U+24Ax | ⒠ | ⒡ | ⒢ | ⒣ | ⒤ | ⒥ | ⒦ | ⒧ | ⒨ | ⒩ | ⒪ | ⒫ | ⒬ | ⒭ | ⒮ | ⒯ |
| U+24Bx | ⒰ | ⒱ | ⒲ | ⒳ | ⒴ | ⒵ | Ⓐ | Ⓑ | Ⓒ | Ⓓ | Ⓔ | Ⓕ | Ⓖ | Ⓗ | Ⓘ | Ⓙ |
| U+24Cx | Ⓚ | Ⓛ | Ⓜ | Ⓝ | Ⓞ | Ⓟ | Ⓠ | Ⓡ | Ⓢ | Ⓣ | Ⓤ | Ⓥ | Ⓦ | Ⓧ | Ⓨ | Ⓩ |
| U+24Dx | ⓐ | ⓑ | ⓒ | ⓓ | ⓔ | ⓕ | ⓖ | ⓗ | ⓘ | ⓙ | ⓚ | ⓛ | ⓜ | ⓝ | ⓞ | ⓟ |
| U+24Ex | ⓠ | ⓡ | ⓢ | ⓣ | ⓤ | ⓥ | ⓦ | ⓧ | ⓨ | ⓩ | ⓪ | ⓫ | ⓬ | ⓭ | ⓮ | ⓯ |
| U+24Fx | ⓰ | ⓱ | ⓲ | ⓳ | ⓴ | ⓵ | ⓶ | ⓷ | ⓸ | ⓹ | ⓺ | ⓻ | ⓼ | ⓽ | ⓾ | ⓿ |
| Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 16.0 |||||||||||||||||

## Emoji

The Enclosed Alphanumerics block contains one emoji: U+24C2, the enclosed M used as a symbol for mask works.
It defaults to a text presentation and has two standardized variants defined to specify text presentation (U+FE0E VS15) or emoji-style (U+FE0F VS16).
Emoji variation sequences :
| U+ | 24C2 |
| base code point | Ⓜ |
| base+VS15 (text) | Ⓜ︎ |
| base+VS16 (emoji) | Ⓜ️ |

## History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Enclosed Alphanumerics block:
| Version | Final code points | Count | L2 ID | WG2 ID | Document |
| 1.0.0 | U+2460..24EA | 139 | | | (to be determined) |
| 1.0.0 | U+2460..24EA | 139 | L2/11-438 | N4182 | Edberg, Peter (2011-12-22), Emoji Variation Sequences (Revision of L2/11-429) |
| 3.2 | U+24EB..24FE | 20 | L2/99-238 | | Consolidated document containing 6 Japanese proposals, 1999-07-15 |
| 3.2 | U+24EB..24FE | 20 | | N2093 | Addition of medical symbols and enclosed numbers, 1999-09-13 |
| 3.2 | U+24EB..24FE | 20 | L2/00-010 | N2103 | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2000-01-05), "8.8", Minutes of WG 2 meeting 37, Copenhagen, Denmark: 1999-09-13—16 |
| 3.2 | U+24EB..24FE | 20 | L2/00-296 | N2256 | Sato, T. K. (2000-09-04), Circled Numbers in JIS X 0213 |
| 4.0 | U+24FF | 1 | L2/01-480 | | Muller, Eric (2001-12-14), Proposal to add NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT ZERO |
| 4.0 | U+24FF | 1 | L2/02-193 | | Muller, Eric (2001-12-14), Proposal to add Negative Circled Digit Zero |
| 4.0 | U+24FF | 1 | L2/02-070 | | Moore, Lisa (2002-08-26), "NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT ZERO", Minutes for UTC #90, Consensus: Accept the character NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT ZERO at U+24FF. |
| ↑ Proposed code points and characters names may differ from final code points and names ↑ See also L2/10-458, L2/11-414, L2/11-415, and L2/11-429 ↑ Refer to the history section of the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block for additional emoji-related documents ||||||