Copyright Symbols And Their Use

Copyright symbols

© Copyright & ℗ Phonographic copyright

The © ‘C in a circle’ is the normal copyright symbol and can be applied to most types of work.

The ℗ ‘P in a circle’, is referred to as the sound recording, phonorecords, phonogram or phonographic copyright symbol.

Sound recordings have a separate copyright that is distinct from that of the underlying work. The duration of this will typically run from the date of publication of the sound recording and the ℗ character is used to denote the separate right that exists in the sound recording, (please see our Music Copyright fact sheet for more information on this topic).

Where to find © and ℗ symbols

• HTML/Websites

  Web site developers will normally use the HTML equivalent for the © which is ‘©’ or the Unicode for the character which is ‘©’. The ℗ character does not have a direct HTML entity, but you can use the UTF8 character set code for the character, which is ‘℗’.

• In Microsoft Word:

  Select the 'Insert' tab on Word’s ribbon. Then select the 'Symbol' button. You can then select the copyright symbol from the list displayed.

• In Open Office and Libre Office:

  From the Insert menu, select 'Special Character', this will open a dialogue where you can select the symbol from a list of various symbols and characters. If you type "copyright" into the 'Search' here it will limit the results to just the © and ℗ characters.

• Character Map/Character Palette

  On Windows computers, there is an applications called 'Character Map' that will allow you select the symbol from a list of various symbols and characters. The © character should be easy to find here, but to find the ℗ character you will need to select the ‘Webdings’ font from the drop-down list at the top. Apple Mac computers have an equivalent applicataion called 'Character Palette'.

• Predictive text

  Many applications, tablets and phones will automatically insert the symbol. Try typing a c in brackets '(c)' followed by a space and it may automatically change into the copyright symbol. This should also work for registered trademark ® - '(r)', and sound recording copyright ℗ - '(p)' symbols.

• Look out for the Omega symbol Ω

  In word processors, WYSIWYG editors, etc. the Omega symbol 'Ω' is commonly used as a menu item to insert special characters.

• Copy/paste

  You can simply copy and paste the symbols from this page.

Copyright notices

A typical copyright notice will state the word 'copyright', the symbol, the date of publication, the copyright owner's name.

For example: Copyright © 2020 Ann Other.

For full details, please see our copyright notice fact sheet.

Find related pages by topic

Copyright notices Music copyright Copyright symbol Sound recordings

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