∞♾️Updated  2023-January-22

News

2022-August-8 (Infinity Day)  Published this evolving⁠[1] article.

Infinity symbol

HTML

In HTML, there are many ways to specify ∞, including the following.

Decimal numeric character reference

&#8734;

Hexadecimal numeric character reference

&#x221E;

Named character reference

&infin;

All three of the above are rendered as:

LaTeX and TeX

In $$\LaTeX$$ and $$\TeX$$, the command…

\infty

…is rendered as:

$$\infty$$

And the sequence of commands…

\tiny \infty
\Tiny \infty
\scriptsize \infty
\small \infty
\normalsize \infty
\large \infty
\Large \infty
\LARGE \infty
\huge \infty
\Huge \infty

…is rendered as:

$$\tiny \infty \Tiny \infty \scriptsize \infty \small \infty \normalsize \infty \large \infty \Large \infty \LARGE \infty \huge \infty \Huge \infty$$

To learn about these (La)TeX sizing commands, see wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Fonts#Built-in_sizes.

URL encoding

Since the ∞ character is not a US-ASCII character, it must be specified in a URL using Percent encoding, which is also known as URL encoding. For example, the URL of this page is:

https://www.ii.com/%E2%88%9E/
^^
Note

In the address bar of most modern web browsers, this is displayed as:

https://www.ii.com/∞/

 ℹ It’s cool that the URL encoding of the infinity symbol includes 88!🆒E2 88 9E is the Hex UTF-8 encoding of the infinity symbol.

Infinity-like emoji

In addition to the infinity symbol (∞) discussed in the previous section, there are emoji⁠[2] that look like the infinity symbol, for example:

CLDR Short NameEmoji StyleBlack & White Style

infinity
unrendered
rendered

&#x267E;&#xFE0F;
♾️

&#x267E;&#xFE0E;
♾︎

unrendered
rendered

&#x1F517;&#xFE0F;
🔗️

&#x1F517;&#xFE0E;
🔗︎

pool 8 ball
unrendered
rendered

&#x1F3B1;&#xFE0F;
🎱️

&#x1F3B1;&#xFE0E;
🎱︎

To learn about the variation selectors &#xFE0E; and &#xFE0F; used in the above table, see Infinite Ink’s Unicode Variation Selectors 15 and 16.

To learn about emoji, see www.unicode.org/emoji/techindex.html and Infinite Ink’s #emoji portal.

Infinity Day

Infinity Day is August 8, which is also known as 8-8, 8.8, 8/8, and 8 August.

For more about Unicode, see Infinite Ink’s…

Endnotes

1. Many Infinite Ink articles, including this one, are evergreen and regularly updated.
2. The plural of “emoji” can be spelled “emoji” or “emojis.” To learn about pluralizing the word “emoji,” see merriam-webster.com’s definition of emoji and the second Q in emojipedia.org’s FAQ. Also see Infinite Ink’s #emoji Portal.

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