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).

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.