The symbol comprises the following elements:

• Leading quiet zone

• Start pattern (narrow bar, narrow space, narrow bar, narrow space)

• Seven pairs of symbol characters that represent data (including a mandatory check digit)

• Stop pattern (wide bar, narrow space, narrow bar)

• Trailing quiet zone

Each ITF-14 character is represented by five elements: five bars or five spaces, two of which are wide and three narrow. The name "Interleaved 2 of 5" comes from the interleaving of the patterns of bars and spaces that represent the individual characters within the symbol: characters are represented in pairs, and in every 10 elements, the five bars represent one character and the five spaces between them represent the next character.

ITF-14 contains no intercharacter spaces.

This symbology supports all numeric digits (0-9).

ITF-14 contains a mandatory check digit that is based on the modulo 10 (mod 10) algorithm.

The X dimension of an ITF-14 symbol depends on the needs of the application that the symbol is used for. A minimum space of 1.02 mm is required between the bottom of the lower bearer bar and the top of any human readable interpretation. The quiet zones must be at least 10X wide, where "X" is the current X dimension.

ITF-14 barcodes should include bearer bars either as a rectangular frame around the barcode or as two perpendicular bars across the top and bottom of the data-expressing bars. Bearer bars are mandatory when it is technically feasible to include them.