Musical accidentals

U+266D ♭, U+266E ♮ and U+266F ♯ are accidentals used in musical notation to alter the pitch of a note by one semitone. However, they are also frequently used in running text, and even more frequently substituted for ASCII lookalikes due to lack of font support. From Bringhurst’s _The Elements of Typographic Style_:

> Three elementary musical symbols - ♭ ♯ ♮, the flat, sharp and natural - are needed for setting normal texts that make reference to standard European musical pitches and keys (Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 110 in A♭, Ennemond Gaultier’s Suite for Lute in F♯m, the drop from C♯ to C♭, etc). These characters are, however, missing from most text fonts. (The octothorp is not an adequate substitute for the sharp.)