Variation Selectors (Unicode block)
Variation Selectors is the block name of a Unicode code point block containing 16 variation selectors. Each variation selector is used to specify a specific glyph variant for a preceding character. They are currently used to specify standardized variation sequences for mathematical symbols, emoji symbols, 'Phags-pa letters, and CJK unified ideographs corresponding to CJK compatibility ideographs. At present only standardized variation sequences with VS1, VS2, VS3, VS15 and VS16 have been defined; VS15 and VS16 are reserved to request that a character should be displayed as text or as an emoji respectively. These combining characters  are named "variation selector-1" (for U+FE00) through to "variation selector-16" (U+FE0F), and are abbreviated VS1 – VS16. Each applies to the immediately preceding character. As of Unicode 13.0: This list is continued in the Variation Selectors Supplement. History. The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Variation Selectors block: