D83D

D83D is a hexadecimal value that functions as a high surrogate in UTF-16 encoding. It is not a standalone Unicode code point or character. In the Unicode system, code points above U+FFFF are encoded using pairs of 16-bit code units known as surrogate pairs. The high surrogate occupies the range D800–DBFF, and D83D is one particular value within that range used to begin such a pair.

When D83D is paired with a corresponding low surrogate in the range DC00–DFFF, together they encode a single Unicode code point from the supplementary planes (U+10000 to U+10FFFF). The exact character depends on the low surrogate that follows. For example, the pair D83D DE00 encodes U+1F600 (GRINNING FACE), while D83D DE02 encodes U+1F602 (FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY). Many emoji and other symbols in the emoji blocks are represented in this way in UTF-16.

In practice, D83D often appears in contexts dealing with emoji and Unicode text interchanges, especially in UTF-16 encoded data, languages like JavaScript, or JSON strings that include characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane. On its own, D83D has no printable symbol; its meaning emerges only when combined with a matching low surrogate to form a complete code point.