Plus Sign

The Plus Sign at U+002B is the Basic Latin symbol used to mark addition, positivity, and inclusion. It is a printable punctuation-like character in the ASCII range, but its meaning changes with the notation system around it. In mathematics and science, + joins quantities to be added, as in 2 + 3, and can mark a positive value or charge, as in +5 or Na+. It also appears in grades and ratings, where B+ or A+ means a stronger version of the base grade. In everyday writing, the sign often means “and” or “plus,” especially in compact labels such as “coffee + cake” or “tax + service.” Telephone numbers use it before a country code, as in +44 or +1, to indicate an international dialing prefix rather than arithmetic. Computing gives + several specialized roles: it is an addition operator in many programming languages, a concatenation marker in some contexts, and part of symbols such as +=. It is visually simple but can be confused with similar heavy, fullwidth, or mathematical plus variants when text is copied from styled sources.