Replacement characters
The replacement character ( ) is a character that is displayed instead of non-displayable characters.
The character is in position U + FFFD in the Unicode block special . It is represented in most fonts as a black diamond with a white question mark .
The replacement character - also replacement character or in Unicode REPLACEMENT CHARACTER - should be displayed if a character is encountered that is not defined in the set character set . Whether this actually happens depends on the implementation in question; instead, there can be a mess of characters .
In German-language texts, the replacement character is typically displayed instead of umlauts and ß when a text encoded in ISO 8859-1 is displayed with the setting UTF-8 .
Web links
Wiktionary: substitution signs - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
- Entry at Unicode.org (English)
- Entry at Decodeunicode.org (German)
- Entry at Fileformat.info (English)
- Unknown and Missing Characters . (PDF) Unicode Implementation Guidelines (English)