Star Symbols

Star shapes from three points to twelve: the solid ★ and outline ☆ used for ratings, four-pointed ✦ for sparkle, spoked asterisks ✳ and pentagrams ⛤. Alternate a filled star with an empty one to draw a score, and use a half-filled star where the rating lands between two whole numbers.

Copy and Paste Star Symbols

Stars are the most-copied shape on this site, and the reason is that ★ does one job nothing else does: repeated, it draws a rating that works anywhere text works — a review, a spreadsheet cell, a chat message, a plain-text file. Alongside it sit the four-pointed sparkles, the spoked asterisks, the pointed stars from three to twelve, and the religious stars. Everything here is star text rather than an image, so star symbol copy and paste works into any field that accepts characters at all.

What Are Star Symbols?

Star symbols are Unicode characters drawn as a star. The two most used, ★ U+2605 and ☆ U+2606, are formally named Black Star and White Star — and in Unicode naming those words mean filled and hollow, not colour. Both render in your text colour, which is exactly why a row of them can be pasted into a document and still match the surrounding type. That is the difference between star text symbols and star emojis: the first take your formatting, the second bring their own.

Most of the rest come from two places. The Dingbats block holds the printer's ornaments — ✦ ✧ ✩ ✪ ✫ ✬ ✭ ✮ ✯ ✰ and the spoked asterisks — drawn as typesetting decoration long before anyone pasted them into a username. The Geometric Shapes Extended block, added much later, fills in the shapes the Dingbats missed: stars at three, four, six, eight and twelve points, in a range of weights.

How to Use Star Symbols

Star Symbols for Ratings

A rating is built by alternating filled and hollow: ★★★☆☆ reads as three out of five at a glance, and needs no image, no styling and no second colour. Where a score falls between two whole numbers, ⯪ and ⯫ are stars with one half filled, so three and a half becomes ★★★⯪☆. The smaller ⭑ ⭒ do the same job at a reduced size when a full-height star would crowd the line. Any of them works as a star icon in an interface label, where a real image would need loading.

Typing Star Symbols on a Keyboard

No star on this page has a short Windows Alt code — a sweep of every value in both the DOS and Windows character sets returns nothing, because the stars were all encoded after those tables were fixed. One route that looks like it works and does not: setting a letter in Webdings or Wingdings draws a star on screen, but the underlying character is still the letter, so it reverts the moment the text moves to a font that lacks it. What actually works is the full Unicode value: Alt and 9733 for ★, 9734 for ☆. In Word you can type 2605 and press Alt+X. A Mac opens the Character Viewer with Ctrl+Cmd+Space, Linux takes Ctrl+Shift+U then 2605. Phones have no route at all, which is why most people arrive here rather than at a keyboard shortcut.

Star Symbols in Text Art

The lighter shapes are the useful ones for decoration: ⋆ and ✧ read as small points of light rather than solid marks, and ✦ placed either side of a name sits there without swamping it. The heavier 🞿 🟐 are better as a single accent than repeated. Because you paste text and not a picture, an aesthetic star arrangement built this way survives wherever it is pasted.

Types of Star Symbols

Five Pointed Star Symbols

★ and ☆ are the classic pair. ✪ has a circled centre, ✯ an open one, ✭ and ✮ are outlined at different weights, and ⚝ is the outlined white star used in heraldry. ٭ is the five-pointed star of Arabic typography, and 🟉 🟊 are the light and heavy five-pointed forms from the newer block.

Multi Pointed Star Symbols

Four points give you ✦ ✧, the pair that reads as a sparkle or a twinkle. Six-pointed stars give ✶ ✷ 🟋 🟌, eight-pointed give ✳ ✴ 🟎 🟏, and twelve give 🟒 🟓. 🟀 🟁 🟂 are the three-pointed stars, and the pinwheel variants 🟃 🟇 🟍 are the same shapes with their points swept round.

Asterisk Star Symbols

The asterisk family is star-shaped punctuation rather than decoration. * is the keyboard one; ∗ and ⋆ are its mathematical counterparts, sized and spaced as operators. ✢ ✣ ✤ ✥ are the four-spoked ornaments, ❉ ❊ ❋ the balloon and propeller forms, and 🞯 🞵 🞻 start a run of five, six and eight-spoked asterisks at six increasing weights. ⁂ is the asterism, three asterisks in a triangle used to mark a break in a text, and ꙳ is the Slavonic asterisk from liturgical printing.

Sparkle and Shooting Star Symbols

✨ is sparkles, 🌟 the glowing star, ⭐ the plain star emoji, 🌠 a shooting star and 💫 the dizzy symbol — which is worth naming carefully, because it is drawn as a swirling star but Unicode does not call it a star at all. These star emojis arrive in full colour and at a fixed size wherever they land, unlike every other character on this page.

Religious Star Symbols

✡ is the Star of David, known in Hebrew as the Magen David and in English as the Shield of David — a six-pointed figure formed from two overlapping triangles. 🔯 is the same shape with a dot at its centre. ☪ is the star and crescent. ⛤ is the pentagram, with ⛧ its inverted form and ⛥ ⛦ the right and left-handed interlaced versions.

A pentagram drawn inside a circle is a pentacle, and Unicode has no single character for one — the circle has to be added by the font or the design. If you need the enclosed look in plain text, ✪ is the closest thing here: a five-pointed star with a circled centre.

Best Uses for Star Symbols

Star Symbols in Names and Bios

A star either side of a display name is the oldest decoration on the internet and still the most legible, because ★ is supported by every font that has ever shipped. The lighter ✧ and ⋆ suit a name that already has a lot going on.

Star Symbols in Documents

⁂ separates sections where a horizontal rule would be too heavy. ✳ works as a footnote marker in a document that has already used * for something else, and ★ marks a preferred item in a plain-text list that has no formatting to give it.

Star Symbols Unicode Names and Codes

The names describe the drawing rather than the meaning: ★ is U+2605 Black Star, ☆ is U+2606 White Star, ✦ is U+2726 Black Four Pointed Star, ✳ is U+2733 Eight Spoked Asterisk, ⛤ is U+26E4 Pentagram, ✡ is U+2721 Star of David. Every code point above is printed beside the character it belongs to.

If you type symbols regularly it is worth knowing where each one sits, because that tells you how well it will travel. The Dingbats stars from U+2700 and the two plain stars at U+2605 are decades old and safe everywhere. The Geometric Shapes Extended run above U+1F7C0 is recent, so a device with an older font may show a box instead — check before using those in anything that has to render on someone else's screen.

Frequently Asked Questions About Star Symbols

How do I make a star rating with symbols?

Repeat ★ for the score and ☆ for the remainder, to whatever total you are rating out of. For a half point, ⯪ or ⯫ is a star with one side filled. Because these are characters rather than images, the rating survives being copied into a spreadsheet, a database field or a plain-text export.

Why is ★ called a black star when it is not black?

In Unicode names, black means solid and white means hollow. ★ takes the colour of the text around it, so in white text on a dark background it renders white while still being called Black Star. ☆ is the outline of the same shape.

How do I type a star symbol without copying it?

There is no short Alt code for any star. On Windows use the full value — Alt and 9733 for ★, 9734 for ☆ — or type 2605 then Alt+X in Word. On a Mac, Ctrl+Cmd+Space; on Linux, Ctrl+Shift+U followed by 2605.

What is the difference between ★ and ⭐?

★ is a text character that takes your font's colour and size. ⭐ is an emoji, drawn by the system in yellow at a fixed size, and it will look different on Android, iOS and Windows. Use ★ where the star must match the surrounding text.

Which star symbol is the pentagram?

⛤ U+26E4. ⛧ is the inverted pentagram, and ⛥ ⛦ are the right and left-handed interlaced forms. These are distinct from ★, which is a plain filled star with no interior lines.

Why do some star symbols show as an empty box?

Whatever is rendering the page was never given a drawing for it. The three, four, six and twelve-pointed stars above U+1F7C0 were added to Unicode recently and are the most likely to be missing. ★ ☆ ✦ ✧ ✳ are old enough to be safe everywhere.

Related Collections for Star Symbols

The snowflakes and florettes that used to sit here have moved to the collections that actually describe them — weather symbols for the snowflakes and flower symbols for the florettes. For a face with stars for eyes, see smiley face symbols. ⋆ and ∗ are also operators, listed among the math symbols. Everything else is indexed at symbol collections.