Star symbols.

Where star symbols come in handy

Stars are one of the most-copied symbols because they do so much: a row of ★ makes an instant rating, a ✦ or ✧ adds a decorative flourish to a bio or heading, and ✨ signals something new or special. The solid (★) and outline (☆) pair is perfect for showing a score out of five — fill some, outline the rest. Like other text symbols, these inherit your font's colour and size, so they sit neatly inside usernames and headings, while the ⭐ emoji is the coloured version for messages. Pair them with the heart symbols for more decorative characters.

How to type a star symbol

There is no classic Alt code for ★ on the numeric keypad, so use one of these instead:

• Word and Outlook: type the hex code and press Alt + X — 2605 becomes ★, 2606 becomes ☆, 2726 becomes ✦, 2B50 becomes ⭐.
• Windows, any app: press Win + . and switch to the symbols tab of the emoji panel.
• macOS: Ctrl + Cmd + Space opens the Character Viewer; search "black star".
• Linux: Ctrl + Shift + U, then 2605, then Enter.
• HTML and CSS: ★ is ★, ★ or ★; ☆ is ☆ or ☆; ✦ is ✦. In CSS, content: "\2605". The HTML entities page has the full set.

Which star is which

★ (U+2605) and ☆ (U+2606) are a matched pair: the same five-point shape, filled and hollow, at the same width. That equal width is why ★★★☆☆ stays perfectly aligned and why they are the right choice for a rating row. ⭑ (U+2B51) and ⭒ (U+2B52) are the same pairing at a smaller size.

The decorative stars ✦ ✧ ✩ ✪ ✫ ✬ ✭ ✮ ✯ ✰ come from the Dingbats block and are drawn to different widths and weights — ✦ and ✧ are four-pointed and read as a sparkle rather than a star. Two more lookalikes are actually maths: ⋆ (U+22C6, star operator) and ∗ (U+2217, asterisk operator) are small, centred on the maths axis and spaced as operators, so they belong in formulae, not in a rating. The math symbols page covers those.

Then there are the emoji: ⭐ (U+2B50), 🌟, ✨, 💫 and 🌠 always render as coloured pictures and cannot be restyled. ★ has no emoji form and ⭐ has no text form, so they are genuinely different characters rather than two views of one — more of these are on the emoji page.

Ratings, rendering and accessibility

If a star shows as a box, the font in use has no glyph for it and no fallback font on the system does either — most common with the Dingbats stars in a tightly subset webfont, where the browser silently swaps in another family and the star arrives at a mismatched weight. Sticking to ★ and ☆ avoids nearly all of it. To colour a star, use ★ with a CSS color: unlike ⭐ it inherits the colour and size of your text, so a gold rating and a grey placeholder come from the same character.

A rating built only from characters is not accessible. Screen readers announce ★★★☆☆ letter by letter, as "black star black star…", or skip it entirely, and neither conveys "three out of five". Put the rating in text too — an aria-label of "Rated 3 out of 5" on the container, or a visible caption — and treat the stars as the picture of the number, not the number itself.