Editing Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols (section)

{{Short description|Unicode block}}
{{hatnote|For the meanings of these symbols, see [[List of letters used in mathematics, science, and engineering]]}}
{{Infobox Unicode block
|rangestart = 1D400
|rangeend = 1D7FF
|script1 = [[Script (Unicode)#Special script property values|Common]]
|symbols = Mathematical
|3_1 = 991
|4_0 = 1
|4_1 = 2
|5_0 = 2
|note = <ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/ucd/|title=Unicode character database|work=The Unicode Standard|accessdate=2023-07-26}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/versions/enumeratedversions.html|title=Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard|work=The Unicode Standard|accessdate=2023-07-26}}</ref>
}}

{{Special characters}}

'''Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols''' is a [[Unicode block]] comprising styled forms of [[Latin alphabet|Latin]] and [[Greek alphabet|Greek]] letters and decimal [[numerical digit|digits]] that enable mathematicians to denote different notions with different letter styles. The letters in various fonts often have specific, fixed meanings in particular areas of mathematics. By providing uniformity over numerous mathematical articles and books, these conventions help to read mathematical formulas. These also may be used to differentiate between concepts that share a letter in a single problem.

[[Unicode]] now includes many such symbols (in the range U+1D400&ndash;U+1D7FF).&nbsp;The rationale behind this is that it enables design and usage of special mathematical characters ([[typeface|fonts]]) that include all necessary properties to differentiate from other alphanumerics, e.g. in mathematics an [[italic type|italic]] letter "𝐴" can have a different meaning from a [[roman type|roman]] letter "A". Unicode originally included a limited set of such letter forms in its [[Letterlike Symbols]] block before completing the set of Latin and Greek letter forms in this block beginning in version 3.1. 

Unicode expressly recommends that these characters not be used in general text as a substitute for [[markup language|presentational markup]];<ref>{{cite book | title = The Unicode Standard, Version 13.0 | chapter = 22.2 Letterlike Symbols | publisher = Unicode, Inc | date = March 2020 | location = Mountain View, CA | url = https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode13.0.0/ch22.pdf#G15993}}</ref> the letters are specifically designed to be semantically different from each other. Unicode does {{em|not}} include a set of normal serif letters in the set.{{efn|Unicode thus assumes a given font is a serif by default; a sans-serif font that supports the range would thus display the standard letters and the "sans-serif" symbols identically but could not display normal serif symbols of the same.}} Still they have found some usage on [[social media]], for example by people who want a stylized user name,<ref name="YayText!">{{cite web |last= |first= |date=2023-07-18 |title=Bold and Cursive Unicode Text Tool - 𝐁𝐨𝐥𝐝 and 𝕮𝖚𝖗𝖘𝖎𝖛𝖊 |url=https://www.boldtextgenerator.co/ |access-date=2023-07-18 |website=Bold Text Generator Tool}}</ref> and in [[email spam]], in an attempt to bypass [[Email_filtering|filters]].

All these letter shapes may be manipulated with [[MathML]]'s attribute mathvariant.

The introduction date of some of the more commonly used symbols can be found in the [[Table of mathematical symbols by introduction date]].