Text Presentation

The rendering of a character as a monochrome text symbol, either by default or when Variation Selector-15 is applied.

Text presentation shows characters as simple, monochrome outlines — the way they appeared before emoji existed. For example, ☺ (U+263A) with text presentation appears as a simple line drawing.

Developers can force text presentation by adding VS-15 (U+FE0E) after a character. This is useful when you want to display a symbol in its traditional text form rather than as a colorful emoji.

Characters originally from text standards (arrows, mathematical symbols, etc.) typically default to text presentation unless a VS-16 is appended.