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.

Copyright symbolWhere 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.