Cross Symbols

Latin ✝, Greek ✚, Orthodox ☦, Maltese ✠ and the dagger † are different crosses, not one shape in different weights. Click the one that says what you mean; † placed before a date is the standard mark for the year someone died.

Copy and Paste Cross Symbols

The grid above holds 37 crosses, and they are not one shape in 37 weights — a Latin cross ✝, a Greek cross ✚ with arms of equal length, an Orthodox cross ☦ with its slanted footrest and a dagger † all mean different things to the people who read them. Click the one that says what you mean; the section below explains which is which.

What Are Cross Symbols?

Cross symbols are Unicode text characters, so they take the colour, size and font of the text around them and paste anywhere text goes. Most sit in the Dingbats block from U+271A to U+2725, with the older religious crosses in Miscellaneous Symbols at U+2626 to U+2671 and the daggers back at U+2020, where they have been part of the standard since its first version.

People searching for a cross font are usually looking for these. There is no font to download and nothing to install: a cross character is a letter as far as your device is concerned, which is why it survives being pasted into a profile field, a document or a spreadsheet cell that would reject an image.

How to Use Cross Symbols

Copying Cross Symbols

Click any cross in the grid and the bare character goes to your clipboard, with nothing added around it.

Pasting Cross Symbols Into Apps

Ctrl+V on Windows and Linux, Cmd+V on Mac, long-press and Paste on a phone. Because these are text, they work in a display name, a caption, a headstone inscription typed into a form, a footnote or a message.

Cross Symbols and Text Colour

All but two of these render in your text colour, which is what makes them usable in a document or a printed order of service. The exceptions are ❌ and ❎: those two are emoji, so most platforms draw them red or green at their own size no matter what the surrounding text is doing. Reach for ☓ or ✗'s neighbours if you want a plain X that behaves.

Types of Cross Symbols

Christian Cross Symbols

✝ is the Latin cross, the upright with a crossbar set above centre, and it is the one most people mean. ✞ is the same shape drawn with a shadow, ✟ the same shape in outline only. All three read identically at a glance and differ only in weight, which matters when the cross sits next to text rather than alone.

Orthodox and Eastern Cross Symbols

☦ is the Orthodox cross: three bars, the lowest one slanted. ♰ and ♱ are the West and East Syriac crosses. ☩ is the Cross of Jerusalem and ☨ the Cross of Lorraine, which carries two horizontal bars of unequal length. These are specific traditions rather than decorative variants, and using the right one is the difference between a detail and a mistake.

Greek and Geometric Cross Symbols

✚ is the Greek cross — four arms of equal length, no upright — and it is the shape on a pharmacy sign or an ambulance rather than a church. ✙ is its outlined form, ✛ and ✜ the open-centre versions in light and heavy. ☓ is the saltire, a cross turned forty-five degrees, and ⁜ is the dotted cross used as a printer's mark.

Latin and Celtic Cross Symbols

Three characters carry the plain Latin cross at weights the dingbats do not reach: 🕆 outlined, 🕇 heavy, and 🕈 the Celtic cross with its ring. ☧ is the Chi Rho, the earliest Christian monogram, built from the first two Greek letters of Christ rather than from a cross at all. 🕂 is the cross pommee, whose arms end in discs, with 🕀 circled and 🕁 set above a half-circle.

Greek Cross Symbols by Weight

Where ✚ gives one thickness, 🞡 🞢 🞣 🞤 🞥 run thin to very bold in five even steps. Those are the ones for a cross that has to match the weight of the type around it rather than sit heavier than it.

Heraldic Cross Symbols

✠ is the Maltese cross, eight points made from four arrowheads meeting at the centre, and ⛨ sets a black cross on a shield. Both come from heraldry rather than liturgy, which is why they turn up on badges, crests and emergency-service insignia far more often than in religious writing.

Dagger and Asterisk Cross Symbols

† and ‡ are the dagger and double dagger. They are typographic marks, not religious ones — the second and third footnote references after the asterisk — but the single dagger has a second job explained further down. ✢ ✣ ✤ ✥ are four-spoked asterisks whose spokes end in teardrops, balloons and clubs; they read as ornaments rather than crosses, and they are the ones to use for decoration.

Cross Symbols Used as Cross Marks

❌ and ❎ are the cross marks — "no", "wrong", "closed". They are the only emoji in this set and behave accordingly, arriving coloured and enlarged.

Best Uses for Cross Symbols

Cross Symbols in Dates and Memorials

This is the use worth knowing. In print and in most European conventions, an asterisk marks the year of birth and a dagger the year of death: *1943 †2019. The dagger is standard in obituaries, genealogies and reference works, and it is understood without explanation in a way that a Latin cross before a date is not.

Cross Symbols in Names and Bios

A single ✝ or ✞ beside a name is one character wide and stays in your text colour, so it sits in a bio without the size jump an emoji brings. ✠ and ☩ do the same job with a heraldic rather than a devotional reading.

Cross Symbols in Documents and Footnotes

Where footnote numbers would clutter a page, the traditional sequence runs asterisk, then †, then ‡, then doubled forms. It still works in a word processor that has no footnote feature, and it survives being copied into plain text.

Cross Symbols Unicode Names and Codes

The names are descriptive: ✝ is U+271D Latin Cross, ✚ is U+271A Heavy Greek Cross, ☦ is U+2626 Orthodox Cross, ✠ is U+2720 Maltese Cross, † is U+2020 Dagger. Every tile carries its own code point.

On Windows, hold Alt and type on the numeric keypad: 0134 for † and 0135 for ‡, which are the two with short codes because they predate Unicode in the Windows character set. The rest need the decimal Unicode value — 10013 for ✝, 10010 for ✚, 9766 for ☦, 10016 for ✠. On Linux, Ctrl+Shift+U then 271d and Enter gives ✝. Mac has no numeric route — the Character Viewer at Ctrl+Cmd+Space is the way there. In HTML, † renders † and ✝ renders ✝.

Frequently Asked Questions About Cross Symbols

Is there a Celtic cross symbol?

Yes — 🕈, U+1F548, a cross set inside a ring. It is drawn heavier than the dingbat crosses and its font support is thinner, so test it where you mean to use it; if it fails to render, ☩ the Cross of Jerusalem is the nearest shape that works everywhere.

Is there an upside-down cross symbol?

Not as an inverted Latin cross — Unicode has no Petrine cross character, and what circulates as an "upside down cross copy paste" is either an image or ✝ rotated with CSS, which reverts to upright the moment it is pasted as text. The one character here that genuinely points the other way is ⸸, the turned dagger, a typographic mark rather than a religious one.

What does the ❌ symbol mean?

Refusal or error — wrong answer, closed, not available. It is the emoji cross mark, U+274C, and it is deliberately loud. For a quiet X inside a sentence, ☓ here or the plain multiplication and ballot marks on the check mark symbols page behave much better.

How do I type a cross symbol without copying it?

Alt+0134 gives † on Windows with the numeric keypad, and the other crosses need their decimal Unicode value, listed above. There is no cross key on any standard keyboard or phone layout, which is why copying is the practical route for all of them except the dagger.

Why does a cross symbol show as a box or a question mark?

Whatever font is rendering the text does not carry that particular cross. ✝, ✚ and † are supported almost everywhere; ♰, ♱ and ⛨ are the ones most likely to be missing, because they are rarer and were added later. Test the rarer ones where you intend to use them before committing to one.

Are cross symbols the same as a cross font?

No, and the distinction saves a download. A font changes how existing letters are drawn; these are their own characters, already in every standard font, so nothing needs installing and nothing breaks when someone else opens your text on a different device.

Related Collections for Cross Symbols

For the X sense rather than the religious one — ballot marks, multiplication signs and the crossed-out variants — see check mark symbols. Other faith symbols including ✡ and ☪ sit with the star symbols, since both are built on stars. If what you actually want is your own text struck through rather than a cross character, that is the crossed out text generator. Everything else is on the symbol collections index.