By Igor R. · Updated September 2026 Tested in Outlook for Windows, Outlook on the web, Gmail, Apple Mail and the iOS and Android mail apps. Symbol code points follow the Unicode Standard.
Short answer: use ✆ or ☏ for phone, not ☎. Use ✓ not ✔ or ☑. Those look almost identical on your screen, but the ones on the right are emoji-capable — they render as flat text on your desktop and as colour emoji on your recipient’s phone.
Safe signature symbols — tap to copy
Got a symbol from an old signature and don't know what it is? Paste it into the Symbol Identifier to find out whether it's emoji-flagged.
The problem nobody warns you about
You build a signature in Outlook. It looks sharp — thin grey icons, clean type, everything monochrome and professional.
Then someone opens it on an iPhone and your telephone icon is a glossy blue-and-white cartoon handset.
Nothing broke. The character did what it was designed to do. Unicode gives certain characters two presentations — a flat text form and a colour emoji form — and each platform picks one by default. Desktop mail clients usually pick text. Phones almost always pick emoji.
The fix isn't a font or a setting. It's choosing characters that have no emoji form at all.
The three groups
Every symbol you'd consider for a signature falls into one of these.
Group 1 — always monochrome. Safe everywhere. ★ ☆ ✓ ✗ • · ▸ ■ ● ◆ ◇ ❖ ✦ ➤ → › » │ | ⌂ ✎ ⚑ ⚐ ⊕ ⊛ @ ✆ ☏ These have no emoji form. They render as text on every platform and inherit your font colour and size.
Group 2 — emoji-capable. Looks fine on desktop, flips to colour on phones. ✉ ☎ ✂ ✈ ▪ ⌨ ℹ ❤ ♥ ☑ ✔ ✒ ⚙ ⚠ This is the trap. Every one of these renders as flat text in desktop Outlook, which is where most people build and preview their signature.
Group 3 — always colour. No text form exists. 📞 📧 ✅ ⭐ 🌐 📍 No trick makes these monochrome. If you use them, accept they'll be colour everywhere.
The safe swap table
Each row is a near-identical replacement.
| Don't use | Use instead | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| ☎ | ✆ or ☏ | Telephone location sign / white telephone |
| ✔ ☑ | ✓ | Check mark |
| ▪ | ■ or • | Black square / bullet |
| ✒ | ✎ | Lower right pencil |
| ⚠ | ! or ⊛ | Plain text reads better anyway |
| ⭐ | ★ | Black star |
| ✅ | ✓ | Check mark |
| 📞 | ✆ | Telephone location sign |
| 📧 ✉ | @ | No monochrome envelope exists — see below |
The envelope is the one genuine gap. ✉ is emoji-capable and there's no flat equivalent in common fonts. Either accept the colour on mobile, use the @ symbol as your email marker, or skip the icon and write "Email:". Most well-built corporate signatures do the last one.
Forcing text presentation with VS15
If you must use a Group 2 character, you can request the text form by appending variation selector 15, an invisible character that means "render the previous character as text."
In HTML: ☎︎ gives ☎ with the text form requested.
Two caveats worth being honest about. It's a request, not a guarantee — some mobile clients ignore it. And because VS15 is invisible, anyone editing your signature later will delete it without realising. It's a reasonable fix for an HTML signature you control; it's fragile for one you hand to colleagues.
Choosing a Group 1 character is more robust than patching a Group 2 one.
Separators and dividers
Signature layout is mostly separators, and every good one is in Group 1.
| Symbol | Name | Good for |
|---|---|---|
│ | Box drawings light vertical | Cleanest inline divider |
| | Vertical line | Plain ASCII, safest of all |
· | Middle dot | Subtle, tight spacing |
• | Bullet | Standard, slightly heavier |
‧ | Hyphenation point | Very light |
❖ | Black diamond minus white X | Decorative, still monochrome |
➤ | Black rightwards arrowhead | Draws the eye to a CTA |
A common pattern: Jane Doe · Head of Design · Acme — middle dots, no icons at all, nothing to go wrong.
Where signatures actually break
Outlook for Windows renders HTML with Microsoft Word's engine. It ignores a lot of modern CSS, but it does render Group 1 characters reliably as text. Group 2 stays text here too — which is exactly why the problem goes unnoticed at build time.
Outlook on the web and Gmail strip or rewrite parts of your HTML. Characters survive fine; it's the styling around them that suffers. Don't depend on CSS to control a symbol's colour or size.
Apple Mail and iOS are the most eager to substitute emoji. If a character has an emoji form, this is where it appears.
Plain-text fallback matters more than people expect. Many clients and most automated systems render the plain-text alternative of your email. Symbols survive as characters — they're just text — but any layout built from HTML tables collapses. A signature that reads well as plain text is one that survives everywhere.
Accessibility
A signature is appended to every message you send, so anything wrong with it is wrong hundreds of times.
Screen readers announce symbols by Unicode name. A decorative row like ★ ★ ★ is read as "black star black star black star" on every email. A ✆ before a number is read as "telephone location sign" — which is not the word "phone."
Three habits:
- Label, don't decorate. "Phone: 555-0142" beats "✆ 555-0142". The symbol saves four characters and costs clarity.
- Never use a symbol as the only carrier of meaning. If ✆ is the only thing marking a phone number, a listener gets no label at all.
- Skip decorative runs entirely. Separators between text items are fine — a reader handles
·naturally. Rows of stars are noise.
More in how screen readers pronounce symbols.
Building the signature
Paste characters directly. Don't use HTML entities in a visual signature editor — it'll escape them and your reader will see ✓ in the message body. Entities belong in hand-written HTML only.
Let symbols inherit type styling. A character takes your font colour and size, so it scales with the text. That's the advantage over an image icon, which needs hosting, breaks when images are blocked, and requires alt text.
Preview on a phone before you commit. Send it to yourself and open it on mobile. That single step catches the entire Group 2 problem in ten seconds.
Keep the font boring. Arial, Helvetica, Georgia, Verdana. All the Group 1 characters above are covered by standard system fonts. Exotic fonts don't travel, and an uncovered glyph becomes an empty box.
Troubleshooting
| Problem | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Icon is colour on phones, flat on desktop | Group 2 emoji-capable character | Swap to the Group 1 equivalent |
| Icon is colour everywhere | Group 3 emoji-only character | Use the Group 1 substitute |
| VS15 stopped working | Someone edited the signature and deleted the invisible character | Use a Group 1 character instead |
| Symbol is an empty box | Recipient's font lacks the glyph | Stick to Group 1 in a standard font |
Signature shows ✓ as text | HTML entity pasted into a visual editor | Paste the actual character |
| Symbols wrong size or colour | Client stripped your CSS | Don't rely on CSS; let them inherit |
| Layout collapses in some clients | Plain-text fallback being rendered | Design so it reads as plain text |
| Symbols vanish when forwarded | Encoding downgrade on an old gateway | Keep to common characters; avoid rare glyphs |
Recap
- Phone: ✆ or ☏, never ☎
- Tick: ✓, never ✔ or ☑
- Star: ★, never ⭐
- Email: @ or the word — there's no monochrome envelope
- Separators:
│ · • ❖ ➤are all safe - Test on a phone before you commit. That's the whole article in one step.
Frequently asked questions
Why do my email signature symbols turn into emoji on phones?
Because Unicode gives some characters two presentations, a flat text form and a colour emoji form, and each platform picks a default. Desktop mail clients usually choose text while phones choose emoji. The reliable fix is to use characters that have no emoji form at all, such as ✆ instead of ☎ and ✓ instead of ✔.
What is the best phone symbol for an email signature?
Use ✆, the telephone location sign, or ☏, the white telephone. Neither has an emoji form, so both stay monochrome on every device. Avoid ☎, the black telephone, which renders as a colour emoji on most phones despite looking flat on your desktop.
Is there a monochrome envelope symbol for email?
Not in common fonts. The envelope ✉ is emoji-capable, and there is no flat equivalent with reliable coverage. Most professional signatures use the @ symbol as the email marker, or simply write the word "Email" before the address.
How do I stop a symbol becoming an emoji?
Append variation selector 15, written as ︎ in HTML, immediately after the character. It requests the text presentation. Be aware it's a request rather than a guarantee, some clients ignore it, and because the character is invisible anyone editing your signature later will delete it without noticing.
Which separator symbols are safe in an email signature?
The vertical line, the box-drawing vertical bar, the middle dot, the bullet, the black diamond and the rightwards arrowhead are all safe. None has an emoji form, so all render as text everywhere and inherit your font colour and size.
Should I use symbols in an email signature at all?
Sparingly. A symbol is appended to every message you send, and screen readers announce each one by its Unicode name on every email. Separators between text items are fine. Decorative rows are not, and a symbol should never be the only thing labelling a phone number or address.
Written by Igor R. Tested in Outlook for Windows, Outlook on the web, Gmail, Apple Mail and the iOS and Android mail apps. Last updated September 2026. Symbol code points follow the Unicode Standard.