Optical Character Recognition (Unicode block)

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

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: [1][2]

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 16.0 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.^[3]

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 ⑀ OCR HOOK, U+2441 ⑁ OCR CHAIR, U+2442 ⑂ OCR FORK, U+2443 ⑃ OCR INVERTED FORK, U+2444 ⑄ OCR BELT BUCKLE, and U+2445 ⑅ OCR BOW TIE. 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.^[4] 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;^[5] 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 ⑆ OCR BRANCH BANK IDENTIFICATION, U+2447 ⑇ OCR AMOUNT OF CHECK, U+2448 ⑈ OCR DASH, and U+2449 ⑉ OCR CUSTOMER ACCOUNT NUMBER.

The latter two characters are misnamed: their names were inadvertently switched when they were named in the 1993 (first) edition of ISO/IEC 10646,^[6] a mistake which had been present since Unicode 1.0.0.^[7] 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^[8] (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.^[9] 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 ⑊ OCR DOUBLE BACKSLASH.

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[a]	Count	L2 ID	WG2 ID	Document
1.0.0	U+2440..244A	11			(to be determined)
			L2/10-416R		Moore, Lisa (2010-11-09), "Consensus 125-C39", UTC #125 / L2 #222 Minutes, Create two formal aliases, U+2448 MICR ON US SYMBOL and U+2449 MICR DASH SYMBOL for Unicode 6.1.
				N4103	"T.3. Optical Character Recognition", Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 58, 2012-01-03
			L2/22-065		Whistler, Ken (2022-04-13), "Opt Subject: Unicode 14.0 "Optical Character Recognition" code chart [Affects U+2447]", Editorial Committee Report and Recommendations for UTC #171Meeting
Proposed code points and characters names may differ from final code points and names