Start of Text
Symbol Meaning
The Start of Text (STX) symbol was developed for use in telegraph and other communication systems to indicate the beginning of the text part of a message following a header that begins with the character sequence ␁ Start of Heading.
In modern computer systems and applications, the use of the U+0002 character has become less common as its functions are often replaced by other methods of encoding and structuring data.
Like other control symbols, this one has no visual representation and does not occupy a lot of space on screen or in printed text. There is a separate symbol in Control Pictures2400–243F representing the graphic image of the Start of Text character as the STX (Start of Text) abbreviation — ␂.
The symbol “Start of Text” is included in the “C0 controls” subblock of the “Basic Latin” block and was approved as part of Unicode version 1.1 in 1993.
Synonyms
STX.
| Unicode Name | Start of Text |
| Unicode Number | |
| HTML Code | |
| CSS Code | |
| Plane | 0: Basic Multilingual Plane |
| Unicode Block | Basic Latin |
| Unicode Subblock | C0 controls |
| Unicode Version | 1.1 (1993) |
| Keyboard shortcut | ^B |
| Type of paired mirror bracket (bidi) | None |
| Composition Exclusion | No |
| Case change | 0002 |
| Simple case change | 0002 |
| scripts | Common |
| Encoding | hex | dec (bytes) | dec | binary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UTF-8 | 02 | 2 | 2 | 00000010 |
| UTF-16BE | 00 02 | 0 2 | 2 | 00000000 00000010 |
| UTF-16LE | 02 00 | 2 0 | 512 | 00000010 00000000 |
| UTF-32BE | 00 00 00 02 | 0 0 0 2 | 2 | 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000010 |
| UTF-32LE | 02 00 00 00 | 2 0 0 0 | 33554432 | 00000010 00000000 00000000 00000000 |