What is the difference between Ratio and Colon?

Ratio is U+2236 in the Mathematical Operators block. Colon is U+003A in the Basic Latin block. They are distinct Unicode codepoints and may appear visually similar depending on the font.

What is the HTML entity for Ratio?

The HTML entity for Ratio (U+2236) is ∶.

What is the HTML entity for Colon?

The HTML entity for Colon (U+003A) is :.

Are Ratio and Colon the same Unicode character?

No. Ratio is U+2236 (decimal 8758) and Colon is U+003A (decimal 58). They are separate codepoints.

What are the UTF-8 encodings of Ratio and Colon?

Ratio (U+2236) encodes as E2 88 B6 in UTF-8. Colon (U+003A) encodes as 3A in UTF-8.

Ratio vs Colon

Compare two Unicode characters side by side — encodings, HTML entities, escape sequences, and Unicode properties. Useful for distinguishing visually similar characters like hyphens and dashes, quotation marks, or homoglyphs.

∶

Ratio

U+2236

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Colon

U+003A

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Property Comparison

Property	Ratio	Colon
Codepoint	`U+2236`	`U+003A`
Decimal	`8758`	`58`
HTML Entity	`∶`	`:`
HTML Decimal	`∶`	`:`
HTML Hex	`∶`	`:`
UTF-8	`E2 88 B6`	`3A`
UTF-16	`22 36`	`00 3A`
UTF-32	`00002236`	`0000003A`
CSS Escape	`\2236`	`\3A`
JS Escape	`\u2236`	`\u003A`
Python Escape	`\u2236`	`\u003A`
URL Encoded	`%E2%88%B6`	`%3A`
Category	`Math Symbol (Sm)`	`Other Punctuation (Po)`
Block	`Mathematical Operators`	`Basic Latin`
Script	`Common`	`Common`
Bidi Class	`ON`	`CS`
Unicode Version	`1.1`	`1.1`

Rows highlighted in amber differ between the two characters.

Common Comparisons

Frequently confused character pairs.

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