Tuesday, June 30, 2026

The search symbol that needs only seven characters

Back in the day, reporters would record their phone interviews by attaching a suction cup to the back of the earpiece part of the handset. It was attached by wire to a machine that did the recording.

You can still buy them.

There was a time when their use was widespread enough to warrant their own unicode. This consisted of circle with a stem coming out of the bottom left.

Does that remind you of anything? How about a magnifying glass?

The near-universal symbol for search is a magnifying glass. Granted, that symbol usually has the stem coming out the bottom right, but still — the resemblance is uncanny.

Unicode for telephone recorder: ⌕

Font Awesome SVG for magnifying glass:

That SVG from Font Awesome looks pretty good, but it uses hundreds of characters as opposed to seven for the unicode. And do you really want a third-party dependency just for a magnifying glass?

Unicode code

⌕

Font Awesome code

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 640 640" width="21" height="21"><!--!Font Awesome Free v7.3.0 by @fontawesome - https://fontawesome.com License - https://fontawesome.com/license/free Copyright 2026 Fonticons, Inc.-->
    <path d="M480 272C480 317.9 465.1 360.3 440 394.7L566.6 521.4C579.1 533.9 579.1 554.2 566.6 566.7C554.1 579.2 533.8 579.2 521.3 566.7L394.7 440C360.3 465.1 317.9 480 272 480C157.1 480 64 386.9 64 272C64 157.1 157.1 64 272 64C386.9 64 480 157.1 480 272zM272 416C351.5 416 416 351.5 416 272C416 192.5 351.5 128 272 128C192.5 128 128 192.5 128 272C128 351.5 192.5 416 272 416z" />
  </svg>

You don’t have to stop there. Unicode has over 100,000 symbols to choose from. If you just need a few items for your blog, this is the way to go.

(Yes, I know about the emojis 🔍 (🔍) and 🔎 (🔎), but they don’t even look good in a retro way.)