Red Exclamation Mark Emoji
A heavy exclamation mark marking urgency, importance or alarm.
Try Red Exclamation Mark emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the Red Exclamation Mark emoji mean?
A heavy exclamation mark marking urgency, importance or alarm.
Loud and attention-seeking. Repeated it reads as alarm, which is useful for warnings and heavy-handed anywhere else.
How to use ❗ naturally
Flagging something that needs attention now, or adding weight to a short message.
Reaction symbols work like visual emphasis: they reinforce a word, rate an idea or replace a short response. Repetition normally increases intensity, but it can also make a message feel more performative.
From standard to slang
The history of ❗
- 2010
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Red Exclamation Mark was first defined as emoji in Emoji 0.6, dated 2010. That label is retrospective: Unicode applied it later to the early mobile core it inherited from the Japanese carriers.
- Before the keyboard
Its visual roots
A red exclamation mark in the same heavy style as the question mark. The pair were encoded as symbols so they could be used as objects in a message.
- Today
How its use evolved
Flagging something that needs attention now, or adding weight to a short message.
Dates follow Unicode’s official Emoji Versions chart. Versions before Emoji 1.0 are labelled retrospectively. See the history of emoji.
In conversation
Examples of ❗ in messages
These examples show the emoji in complete messages, where the words make its intended tone easier to read.
Deadline moved to Thursday ❗
Don't push to main yet ❗
Last call for tickets ❗
When to use it
Using ❗ clearly
Flagging something that needs attention now, or adding weight to a short message. It lands as red exclamation mark emoji or ❗ meaning when the rest of the message supports that reading, and it is the surrounding words that do the deciding — so in a sensitive, professional or cross-cultural conversation, say the thing outright as well.
Common questions
About the red exclamation mark emoji
What does ❗ mean in a text message?
A heavy exclamation mark marking urgency, importance or alarm. Loud and attention-seeking. Repeated it reads as alarm, which is useful for warnings and heavy-handed anywhere else.
Is ❗ always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are red exclamation mark emoji, ❗ meaning, exclamation emoji, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does ❗ look different on another device?
U+2757 identifies the emoji; the picture is a font, drawn separately by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung. Only the artwork changes, never the character.
How do I copy and paste the red exclamation mark emoji?
Use the copy button at the top of this page. ❗ is a character, not an image, so it pastes into messages, captions and filenames as ordinary text.
When was the red exclamation mark emoji introduced?
Unicode’s Emoji Versions data first records ❗ as emoji in Emoji 0.6, dated 2010. Early emoji version numbers can be retrospective, so this date describes its place in the standardised emoji set rather than the first-ever appearance of the underlying symbol.
For developers
❗ in code
Every value below is generated from the character itself, so it stays correct even where a file encoding cannot hold the emoji directly.
| Format | Value | When to use it | Copy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode | U+2757 | The standard reference. Use it to search a character map or a spec. | |
| HTML (hex) | ❗ | For HTML and XML. Safe in files that are not saved as UTF-8. | |
| HTML (decimal) | ❗ | The same reference in decimal. Both render identically. | |
| CSS | \2757 | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{2757} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %E2%9D%97 | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+2757
- Category
- Symbols & Reactions
- Also known as
- red exclamation mark emoji❗ meaningexclamation emoji
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