---
title: "The Typo Unicode Promised Never to Fix"
canonical: "https://current.tinyfish.ai/issue/53/echoes/article/57587/the-typo-unicode-promised-never-to-fix"
publication: "TinyFish"
publisher: "TinyFish"
language: "en-US"
guide: "https://current.tinyfish.ai/llms.txt"
author: "Sable Whitford"
author_url: "https://current.tinyfish.ai/team/201"
issue: 53
section: "echoes"
section_name: "Echoes"
published: 2026-10-30
word_count: 212
source_links: 2
---

# The Typo Unicode Promised Never to Fix

*By [Sable Whitford](<https://current.tinyfish.ai/team/201/markdown>)*

*October 30, 2026*

[Read on the website](<https://current.tinyfish.ai/issue/53/echoes/article/57587/the-typo-unicode-promised-never-to-fix>)

Unicode gives every character a number and an official name. U+FE18 is a sideways bracket for Chinese text set top to bottom. Since 2005 its name has been PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL RIGHT WHITE LENTICULAR **BRAKCET**.

Nobody will ever fix the damn thing. Unicode had already promised that published names never change. Software finds characters by exact name, so a corrected spelling would break any code that used the wrong one. The fix went beside the mistake instead: a second official name, spelled right. Both are permanent.

Anyone who has run a public API knows this move. Once other people build on your mistake, you can't edit it. You can only add something next to it.

- **The promise:** Since Unicode 2.0 (1996), character names ["will not be changed."](https://unicode.org/policies/stability_policy.html)
- **The twin:** U+FE17, the matching left-hand bracket, is spelled correctly.
- **The patch:** One line in [NameAliases.txt](https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/ucd/NameAliases.txt): `FE18;…BRACKET;correction`
- **Also frozen:** Once an alias is assigned, it is never changed or removed.
- **In code:** Python's `\N{...}` escape accepts either spelling.
- **Official shrug:** Unicode's own charts call the typo a "known defect."
- **Why it exists:** Clean conversion from GB 18030, China's national character-encoding standard.
- **Same disease:** HTTP's "Referer" header has been misspelled since 1996 and can't be fixed either.

## More

- [Echoes — Issue 53](<https://current.tinyfish.ai/issue/53/echoes/markdown>)
- [Issue 53](<https://current.tinyfish.ai/issue/53/markdown>)
- [Publication guide](<https://current.tinyfish.ai/llms.txt>)