Optical Character Recognition (Unicode block)

Optical Character Recognition
Range	U+2440..U+245F (32 code points)
Plane	BMP
Scripts	Common
Symbol sets	OCR controls
Assigned	11 code points
Unused	21 reserved code points
Source standards	ISO 2033
Unicode version history
1.0.0 (1991)	11 (+11)
Unicode documentation
Code chart ∣ Web page
Note:

Optical Character Recognition is a Unicode block containing signal characters for OCR and MICR standards.

Block

Optical Character Recognition[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+244x

⑀

⑁

⑂

⑃

⑄

⑅

⑆

⑇

⑈

⑉

⑊

U+245x

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 17.0 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Subheadings

The Optical Character Recognition block has three informal subheadings (groupings) within its character collection: OCR-A, MICR, and OCR.

OCR-A

Further information: OCR-A

A partly redacted German cheque, showing use of ⑂, ⑀ and ⑁ in the machine-readable line

The OCR-A subheading contains six characters taken from the OCR-A font described in the ISO 1073-1:1976 standard: U+2440 ⑀ <reserved-2440>, U+2441 ⑁ <reserved-2441>, U+2442 ⑂ <reserved-2442>, U+2443 ⑃ <reserved-2443>, U+2444 ⑄ <reserved-2444>, and U+2445 ⑅ <reserved-2445>. The OCR bow tie is given the informative alias "unique asterisk".

The hook, chair and fork, in addition to a long vertical bar, are included in the most basic "numeric" implementation level of OCR-A, which includes digits but excludes letters and conventional punctuation. By contrast, the most basic implementation level of OCR-B instead includes the digits, plus sign, less-than sign, greater-than sign, long vertical bar and seven of the capital letters; as such, there are no characters specific to OCR-B in the Optical Character Recognition block.

MICR

Further information: Magnetic ink character recognition

A cheque signed by Richard Nixon, showing use of ⑆, ⑇, ⑈ and ⑉ in the machine-readable line

The MICR subheading contains four punctuation characters for bank cheque identifiers, taken from the magnetic ink character recognition E-13B font (codified in the ISO 1004:1995 standard): U+2446 ⑆ <reserved-2446>, U+2447 ⑇ <reserved-2447>, U+2448 ⑈ <reserved-2448>, and U+2449 ⑉ <reserved-2449>.

The latter two characters are misnamed: their names were inadvertently switched when they were named in the 1993 (first) edition of ISO/IEC 10646, a mistake which had been present since Unicode 1.0.0. Although their formal names remain unchanged due to the Unicode stability policy, they both have corrected normative aliases: U+2448 ⑈ is MICR ON US SYMBOL, and U+2449 ⑉ is MICR DASH SYMBOL (the standard notes that "the Unicode character names include several misnomers").

These symbols had previously been encoded by the ISO-IR-98 encoding defined by ISO 2033:1983, in which they were simply named SYMBOL ONE through SYMBOL FOUR. All four characters have informative aliases in the Unicode charts: "transit", "amount", "on us", and "dash" respectively.

OCR

Further information: JIS X 9008

The OCR subheading consists of a single character: U+244A ⑊ <reserved-244A>.

History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Optical Character Recognition block:

Version	Final code points	Count	L2 ID	WG2 ID	Document
1.0.0	U+2440..244A	11			(to be determined)
			L2/10-416R
				N4103
			L2/22-065