IT and communication - Characters and encodings: The ISO Latin 1 character repertoire:

Detailed descriptions of the characters

Legend: The entries consist of

A (large) glyph for the character. The appearance naturally depends on the font used by your browser.
The name of the character, as defined in the ISO 8859-1 standard itself. In some cases, the Unicode name is given too, in parentheses. Not all name differences between ISO 8859-1 and Unicode standards are given; see notes on character names used in this document. Quite often various jargon names as used for the characters, especially for those in the "lower half" (ASCII range); see entry ASCII in The Jargon Lexicon.
The U+nnnn notation for the character. Here that notation also acts as a link to an entry in Indrek Hein's online character database (which has its own legend). Note that from this notation you can see code position in hexadecimal.
A numeric character reference for use in the HTML language. (For "symbolic" entity references, like © for the copyright sign, see Table of Character Entities for ISO Latin-1.) This also gives the code position in decimal (normal base 10 notation), which is needed e.g. if you use "Alt-0nnn" for typing characters on Windows.
The code position in octal. This is needed e.g. if you use "C-Q-nnn" for typing characters in Emacs
A link to this legend.

	SPACE	`U+0020`	` `	octal: 40

This is the well-known space character, or blank. The abbreviation SP is often used for the name of the character. The ISO 8859-1 standard defines this character formally as follows:

This character may be interpreted as a graphic character, a control character or as both. As a graphic character it has the visual representation consisting of the absence of a graphic symbol.

In different programs for processing and displaying texts, spaces in data may be handled in different ways. In particular, the inter-word gaps can be of different widths in visual presentation. In the HTML language, spaces are treated as "collapsible".

!	EXCLAMATION MARK	`U+0021`	`!`	octal: 41

This character is basically used as a punctuation character at the end of an exclamation. It is also used in mathematics to denote a factorial (as in "5!" which denotes 1×2×3×4×5). Many other special usages exist; e.g. in the C programming language, the exclamation mark denotes a "not" operator (negation)!

Other names (mentioned in the Unicode standard): factorial, bang.

Cf. to inverted exclamation mark (¡).

This character is also used as a substitute for a similar-looking character, latin letter retroflex click (U+01C3) used in the orthography of some African languages, to denote a click sound, e.g. in the name "!Kung" (denoting a people in southern Africa). In principle the two characters are distinct, despite similarity in glyph appearance.

"	QUOTATION MARK	`U+0022`	`"`	octal: 42

This punctuation character is a "symmetric" quotation mark as opposite to "smart" or "asymmetric" quotation marks. That is, when this character is used to mark quotations, the opening quote is identical with the closing quote. Its glyph should be "neutral" (vertical) to reflect this. (The Unicode standard says about the quotation mark: "neutral (vertical), used as opening or closing quotation mark".) However, the appearance varies. It is sometimes difficult to find out what really happens, since text processing programs (word processors) like MS Word typically convert a quotation mark to a different character, often to a language-specific quotation mark, perhaps to a "smart" (curved) quotation mark in English text, a guillemet (« or ») in French text, etc. Entering the ISO Latin 1 quotation mark (ASCII quotation mark) can then be difficult; you might need to use some special "Insert Symbol" function. But you should take that path if your text really contains the ISO Latin 1 quotation mark, e.g. if your text discusses C or JavaScript code or Unix commands where the that very character needs to be used. Using a "smart" (curved) quotation mark wouldn't be smart at all in such cases.

In Unicode, there are several pairs of asymmetric quotation marks, but of them, only the double angle quotation marks « and » belong to ISO Latin 1. Notice in particular that left and right double quotation marks (U+201C, U+201D) do not belong to ISO Latin 1 (although they belong to the so-called Windows character set).

The rules for using quotation marks vary greatly from one language to another and even within a language. But when ISO Latin 1 is used, there are not many choices: you have to live with " and ' and « and ». It is much better to use these characters for quotations even if they are regarded as typographically inferior than to try to "construct" smart quotes from characters which are not quotes. See general reasons for being strict about meanings of characters. For example, section Quotation Marks in NASA SP-7084 should be read with caution in this respect. Also please notice that even in English there are also styles different from the one described there; for example, single quotes (to be presented using apostrophes in ISO Latin 1) might be used as normal quotes and quotation marks as inner quotes.

The Unicode standard explicitly says that APL quote is identical with the quotation mark. In addition to that, the quotation mark is used in many other programming and command languages, typically to delimit string constants. In some of such languages, a string can be delimited using either quotation marks or apostrophes with no change in meaning, whereas in some others there is a definite difference. For example, in the C language, quotation marks delimit string constants whereas apostrophes delimit character constants; in Perl, quotation marks allow variable substitution within the string whereas apostrophes indicate a pure literal.

In practice, the quotation mark is also widely used as the following symbols, although they are in principle distinct from it (and each other) in Unicode:

double prime (U+2033), which is used to denote seconds (when expressing times or angles) and inches
ditto mark (U+3003)
modifier letter double prime (U+02BA), used e.g. to transliterate Cyrillic "hard sign" (tverdyj znak).

In ASCII, the quotation mark was intended to have secondary usage as diaeresis. See notes on diacritics.

#	NUMBER SIGN	`U+0023`	`#`	octal: 43

In English and some other natural languages, this character is sometimes used in conjunction with ordinal numbers, as in "item #42" (meaning "item number 42"). Such usage is not very common; more often, abbreviations like "nr.", "no.", "n.", or "Nº" are used instead.

In programming languages, markup languages, etc., this character has many different uses. In some of these uses, # relates to ordinal numbers (e.g. in HTML, &#n; denotes the character which occupies code position n in Unicode) while in others it might be just a separator or have some special meaning assigned to it more or less arbitrarily. It is used e.g. in Web addresses, URL references, and the URL syntax specification calls it "crosshatch" character. That name is also mentioned in the Unicode standard, along with the following names: pound sign, hash, octothorpe. For more information on the names as well as usage, see entry Number sign in encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com.

The number sign has also been used as a surrogate for music sharp sign (U+266F), due to some similarity in appearance.

The number sign character unambiguously occupies code position 23 hexadecimal in ISO 8859-1 and in Unicode, although the Unicode standard confusingly mentions "pound sign" as an alternative name to it. Here the word "pound" means a unit of weight (pound avoirdupois, usually abbreviated "lb"), not a currency unit. However, in ASCII that code position was primarily assigned to the pound sterling sign, and some programs and devices might reflect this in their behavior (displaying £ when the data contains #). The ASCII standard said:

The symbol £ is assigned to position 23 [hexadecimal] - -. In a situation where there is no requirement for the symbol £ the symbol # (number sign) may be used in position 23. - - The chosen allocation of [a symbol to this position] for international information exchange shall be agreed between the interested parties.

Notice that the pound sign (as a currency symbol) belongs to ISO Latin 1 as a completely independent symbol in its own code position.

For notes on different names and usages for the number sign, see section names of "&", "@", and "#" in the alt.usage.english FAQ.

$	DOLLAR SIGN	`U+0024`	`$`	octal: 44

This character is a famous currency symbol, but its exact meaning is not quite clear. The Unicode standard explicitly says:

this code is unambiguously dollar sign, not "currency" sign or any other currency symbol

But this is obviously to be interpreted mainly as a warning against the use of the sign to denote a currency generically; cf. to (general) currency sign, which belongs to ISO Latin 1 as a completely independent symbol in its own code position; see also notes on the dollar sign in Character histories. It is not intended to limit the use to denote only those currencies which are named "dollar", still less US dollar only. In fact, the English word "dollar" has a rather general meaning, covering "taler" as well as numerous coins patterned after the taler (as a Spanish peso). The Unicode standard mentions "milreis" and "escudo" as alternative names for dollar sign, so obviously the symbol can be used to denote those currencies, too.

For historical notes on the origin of the $ character itself, see section Origin of the dollar sign in the alt.usage.english FAQ.

In computing, this character has secondary uses which may have nothing to do with any currency. It can, for example, be a character allowed in identifiers and used to signal a reserved or otherwise special identifier.

According to the Unicode standard, a glyph for the dollar sign may have one or two vertical bars.

The dollar sign unambiguously occupies code position 24 hexadecimal in ISO 8859-1 and in Unicode. However, in the ASCII the situation was more vague, and some programs and devices might reflect that in their behavior (e.g. displaying ¤ when the data contains $). The ASCII standard says:

The - - symbol $ is assigned to position 24 [hexadecimal] - - Where there is no requirement for the symbol $ the symbol ¤ (currency sign) may be used in position 24. The chosen allocation of [a symbol to this position] for international information exchange shall be agreed between the interested parties.

%	PERCENT SIGN	`U+0025`	`%`	octal: 45

This character is basically used after numbers, in the meaning 'in the hundred' or 'of each hundred'. It is commonly used immediately after a number (e.g., 50%), but quite often the official spelling requires a space (e.g., 50 %), though this depends on authority. For the historical origin, see notes on the origin of the percent sign in The History of Mathematical Symbols by Douglas Weaver.

For use with SI units, see Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI), section 7.10.2.

In programming languages, for example, the percent sign has very different uses which have nothing to do with percentages, e.g. as a modulus operator in C or as indicating an identifier as a hash in Perl.

Per mille sign (U+2030) and per ten thousand sign (U+2031) do not belong to ISO Latin 1. For the latter, misconceptions about this may have arisen from confusion with the so-called Windows character set.

&	AMPERSAND	`U+0026`	`&`	octal: 46

In natural languages, this character normally means just 'and'. In other contexts, it has many other uses. The visual appearance of this character varies a lot; see Adobe's page The ampersand.

'	APOSTROPHE	`U+0027`	`'`	octal: 47

This character has mixed usage, usually as a punctuation character. Most commonly, it is used either as an apostrophe as in English "don't" or as a single quote. (In Unicode version 1.0, this character was named "apostrophe-quote" to reflect this.) As regards to use as a single quote, see notes on the use of the quotation mark.

According to Unicode, this character has "neutral (vertical)" glyph, but in practice it may get displayed as curved. It is sometimes difficult to find out what really happens, since text processing programs (word processors) like MS Word typically convert an apostrophe to a different character, often to a language-specific quotation mark. Entering the ISO Latin 1 apostrophe (ASCII apostrophe) can then be difficult; you might need to use some special "Insert Symbol" function. But you should take that path if your text really contains the ISO Latin 1 apostrophe, e.g. if your text discusses C or JavaScript code or Unix commands where the that very character needs to be used. Using a "smart" (curved) single quote wouldn't be smart at all in such cases.

In the future, as support to Unicode becomes wider, the use of this character should mostly be replaced by the use of more specific characters.

Version 2.0 of the Unicode standard said that "the preferred character for apostrophe" is the character modifier letter apostrophe (U+02BC); but this was changed in version 2.1 to the following:

U+02BC modifier letter apostrophe is preferred where the character is to represent a modifier letter (for example, in transliterations to indicate a glottal stop). In the latter case, it is also referred to as a letter apostrophe.

U+2019 right single quotation mark is preferred where the character is to represent a punctuation mark, as in "We've been here before." In the latter case, U+2019 is also referred to as a punctuation apostrophe.

The Unicode standard also discusses, in chapter 6, Punctuation, the use of quotation marks in different languages, implying that the preferred characters for opening and closing single quotation mark as used in English are left single quotation mark (U+2018) and right single quotation mark (U+2019).

The rules for using the apostrophe vary from one language to another, and even from one authority to another. For a good summary of one usage style in English, see section Apostrophe in NASA SP-7084.

Unicode defines modifier letter prime (U+02B9) and prime (U+2032) as distinct characters. The former is used mainly in linguistics to denote primary stress or palatalization (e.g. when transliterating Cyrillic soft sign). The latter is used to denote minutes or feet. When only ISO Latin 1 character repertoire is available, apostrophe can be used as a surrogate for those characters. It might look natural to use acute accent for some of such purposes, but since the whole idea is to use a replacement due to character repertoire restrictions, it is best to use a replacement that works most widely (due to being an ASCII character).

In ASCII, the apostrophe was intended to have secondary usage as acute accent. See notes on diacritics. See also notes on the apostrophe in Character histories.

(	LEFT PARENTHESIS	`U+0028`	`(`	octal: 50

This punctuation character is used as an opening delimiter for parenthetic remarks in natural languages. The rules for using such vary from one language to another, and even from one authority to another. For a good summary of one usage style in English, see section Parentheses in NASA SP-7084.

In other languages, there are various uses such as an opening delimiter for a list of parameters. Called opening parenthesis in Unicode version 1.0.

)	RIGHT PARENTHESIS	`U+0029`	`)`	octal: 51

Used as a closing delimiter for parenthetic remarks opened with left parenthesis ()) in natural languages. In other languages, there are various uses such as an closing delimiter for a list of parameters. Called closing parenthesis in Unicode version 1.0.

*	ASTERISK	`U+002A`	`*`	octal: 52

The asterisk has various uses, including the following:

In natural languages, an asterisk or a sequence of asterisks is sometimes used as a reference to a footnote or a margin note*. Several other symbols, such as daggers and (superscript-style) digits and letters are used for such purposes too. Due to glyph problems discussed below, it is probably best to avoid the use of asterisks for such purposes and use some other notations.
*The footnote or margin note itself begins with the asterisk or sequence of asterisks.
The asterisk is sometimes used when indicating the year or date of birth, ye.g. * 1952.
Especially in command languages, the asterisk is often used as a wildcard character which matches any string of characters. For example, *.txt as a command argument might refer to all file names ending with .txt.
In regular expressions, the asterisk often denotes possible repetition. For example, depending on the particular regexp syntax, ab* might denote the set of strings consisting of an a followed by any number (incl. zero) of b's, i.e. a, ab, abb, abbb etc.
In mathematics, the asterisk has several uses as an operator symbol of some kind. Generally such uses are surrogate notations for various star-like symbols with more specific semantics. Often ** indicates exponentiation.
In linguistics, a leading asterisk before a word can be used to indicate a reconstructed form (e.g.: the word king probably derives from old Germanic *kuningaz); it may also indicate an ungrammatical sentence.
In Usenet postings and some other contexts, the asterisk might occasionally be used for *emphasis* (though using _underlines_ is more common).
One of the early uses was to make a series of asterisks a "Check protector", to flank the amount of a check so one could not kite or change the value. That method was applied in punch cards and printers too, and it's still often used e.g. in password input, to help the user count characters but protect the password from prying eyes.
The asterisk is sometimes used to indicate a "masked out" character, as in "G*d".
In several programming languages, asterisk is the multiplication symbol, but it may also have other uses. For example, int *p; declares p as a pointer to int in C, in addition to use as a multiplying operator and other uses.

When writing or quoting expressions in programming, command or other languages which have the asterisk as part of language syntax, the asterisk shall be preserved of course. On the other hand, such usage should not be extended to other contexts, unless the limitations of the character repertoire prevent the use of better symbols. Specifically, in ISO Latin 1 there is a separate multiplication sign, and in some contexts the middle dot (·) is an adequate multiplication symbol.

The glyphs for the asterisk vary, but generally it appears in a more or less superscript style, perhaps in a rather small size. And it is difficult to say what an asterisk should look like, given its mixed usage. When used as an operator of some kind, it should be vertically positioned the same way as e.g. the plus sign. When used as a reference sign, and perhaps in some other uses too, it should appear in superscript style. It seems that most font designs reflect the latter style, making expressions like a*b look somewhat odd. If you cannot use a symbol with less ambiguous meaning, you might try to help things by using a font where the asterisk looks more operator-like, such as the Courier font, though even the Courier * is somewhat raised. Quite often it might be better to use a monospace font for all expressions (like a*b) quoted from programming, command etc. languages.

The name is sometimes misspelled as "asterick" or (intentionally) confused with the name Asterix (Astérix).

The Unicode standard mentions that asterisk is called "star" on phone keypads. It also mentions that the asterisk is distinct from arabic five pointed star (U+066D), asterisk operator (U+2217), and heavy asterisk (U+2731). Note that this list of Unicode characters resembling the asterisk in appearance is far from complete; see e.g. the Dingbats.

+	PLUS SIGN	`U+002B`	`+`	octal: 53

The well-known plus sign, primarily used to denote addition and as a unary plus. Notice in ISO Latin 1 the combination of plus and minus is available as a separate character, plus-minus sign (±).

,	COMMA	`U+002C`	`,`	octal: 54

Primarily this character is a punctuation symbol in natural languages. The rules for using it vary from one language to another, and even from one authority to another. For a good summary of one usage style in English, see section Comma in NASA SP-7084.

Notice that in numbers, some languages (mainly English) use comma as thousands separator (e.g. "1,234" means one thousand two hundred thirty-four) whereas in many other languages it is used as a decimal point (e.g. "1,234" means the same as "1.234" in English). The Unicode standard mentions "decimal separator" as another name for the comma.

In ASCII, the comma was intended to have secondary usage as cedilla. See notes on diacritics.

The comma should not be confused with the Unicode character single low-9 quotation mark (U+201A), which is used in quotations in some usages.

-	HYPHEN, MINUS SIGN (HYPHEN-MINUS)	`U+002D`	`-`	octal: 55

This character is a dual-purpose character: it can be used as a hyphen (punctuation character) or as a minus sign (mathematical symbol). It can usually be called "hyphen" or "minus" depending on the context, but when referred to as a character in a character repertoire, the best term is probably hyphen-minus.

The rules for using the hyphen vary from one language to another, and even from one authority to another. For a good summary of one usage style in English, see section Hyphen in NASA SP-7084.

Hyphens are also widely used as a replacement for various dashes when dashes themselves are not in the available character repertoire; see my document On the use of some MS Windows characters in HTML for the use of hyphens as a replacement for em dash and en dash.

The Unicode standard mentions "hyphen or minus sign" as a synonyms for this character. An older version also mentioned "hyphus". It is best to avoid these synonyms, since the former makes statements ambiguous and the latter is just an invented word which is hardly ever used in reality.

In situations where sufficient support to Unicode can be safely assumed (very rarely at present!), it is best to replace the use of hyphen-minus by Unicode hyphen (U+2010) or non-breaking hyphen (U+2011) or minus sign (U+2212) or, if hyphen-minus had been used e.g. in place of a dash symbol, some other Unicode character such as en dash (U+2013) or em dash (U+2014) or horizontal bar (U+2015). More information: Hyphens and dashes.

Cf. to soft hyphen.

.	FULL STOP	`U+002E`	`.`	octal: 56

This character is probably better known under the name "period" (which was the name used for it in Unicode version 1.0) and is commonly used as a punctuation character but also for other purposes. The Unicode standard mentions the alternative names "dot" and "decimal point" too.

The Unicode standard uses (in section 3.3) this character to illustrate that "a character may have a broader range of use than the most literal interpretation of its name might indicate". It says:

U+002E full stop can represent a sentence period, an abbreviation period, a decimal number separator in English, a thousands number separator in German, and so on.

In addition to such usage, note that programming languages and other notations may use the full stop for purposes that do not correspond to natural-language punctuation (or the name "full stop"!) at all. In particular, it is often used as a separator between components of a hierarchic name, so that foo.bar could denote the bar component of a structure named foo (which might be read as "foo's bar").

The rules for using the period vary from one language to another, and even from one authority to another. For a good summary of one usage style in English, see section Period in NASA SP-7084.

The Unicode standard mentions that this character "may be rendered as a raised decimal point in old style numbers". This is probably to be taken as a warning against interpreting such a character as a middle dot (·).

There is a separate character horizontal ellipsis (U+2026) in Unicode, but it does not belong to ISO Latin 1. One may therefore wish to use three full stops (...) instead as three points of ellipsis. You might consider using no-break spaces between the full stops (. . .) in such cases; for HTML documents, it might be better to use CSS to suggest increased spacing between characters.

/	SOLIDUS	`U+002F`	`/`	octal: 57

This character is much more widely known as "slash" (which was its name in Unicode version 1.0). It is sometimes called "virgule" or even "shilling" (which are alternative names mentioned in the Unicode standard) or "diagonal". Do not confuse it with the reverse solidus (backslash, "\").

Solidus is used for many different purposes, typically as a separator of some kind. Ambiguities easily arise. For example, a date notation like 3/4 might mean the 3rd of April - or the 4th of March; in ISO 8601 notation, the solidus is used when expressing a time interval (e.g. 1998-03-04/04-03 unambiguously means 'from 4th of March to 3rd of April in 1998'). Sometimes the solidus separates alternatives, e.g. in a fill-out form, with the suggestion to strike out the inapplicable alternative(s). In natural languages, the solidus is often used in a very confusing way, so that "foo/bar" might mean "foo or bar", "foo alias bar", or "foo and bar", or something else. In HTML (and in other SGML based markup languages), start and end tags are distinguished from each other by the presence of a solidus in the end tag, so that e.g. </cite> means 'end of cite element'. In natural languages, it seems to be fashionable to use it instead of the word "or", perhaps because the solidus symbol is less definite. In Web addresses and other URLs, the solidus is a separator between hierarchic components; this usage is historically based on similar usage in pathnames in hierarchic file systems.

Unicode defines fraction slash (U+2044) and division slash (U+2215) as characters distinct from solidus and from each other. (Notice that rules for using the solidus in various languages do not yet make this distinction. See e.g. section Slash in NASA SP-7084.) When only ISO Latin 1 character repertoire is available, solidus can be used as a surrogate for fraction slash. For division slash, the division sign is perhaps preferable.

Notice that for three commonly used fractions there are separate "vulgar fraction" characters in ISO Latin 1.

0	DIGIT ZERO	`U+0030`	`0`	octal: 60

A digit. Definitely distinct from the letter O.

1	DIGIT ONE	`U+0031`	`1`	octal: 61

A digit. Definitely distinct from the letter l (el). Cf. to superscript one (¹).

2	DIGIT TWO	`U+0032`	`2`	octal: 62

A digit. Cf. to superscript two (²).

3	DIGIT THREE	`U+0033`	`3`	octal: 63

A digit. Cf. to superscript three (³).

4	DIGIT FOUR	`U+0034`	`4`	octal: 64

A digit.

5	DIGIT FIVE	`U+0035`	`5`	octal: 65

A digit.

6	DIGIT SIX	`U+0036`	`6`	octal: 66

A digit.

7	DIGIT SEVEN	`U+0037`	`7`	octal: 67

A digit.

8	DIGIT EIGHT	`U+0038`	`8`	octal: 70

A digit.

9	DIGIT NINE	`U+0039`	`9`	octal: 71

A digit.

:	COLON	`U+003A`	`:`	octal: 72

This character is used as a punctuation symbol in natural and other languages. The rules for using it vary from one language to another, and even from one authority to another. For a good summary of one usage style in English, see section Colon in NASA SP-7084.

The colon is also used when presenting ratios (proportions) as in "2:3", but in Unicode the character ratio (U+2236) should be used instead in such contexts. For the history, see notes on symbols for ratio and proportion in The History of Mathematical Symbols by Douglas Weaver.

;	SEMICOLON	`U+003B`	`;`	octal: 73

<	LESS-THAN SIGN	`U+003C`	`<`	octal: 74

This character basically denotes a mathematical relation. It is used for some secondary purposes as well, such as an angle bracket. See also notes on using < and > as brackets.

ISO Latin 1 does not contain a less-than or equal to (U+2264) character as Unicode does. The usual workaround is to use the character pair <= (less-than sign followed by equals sign).

=	EQUALS SIGN	`U+003D`	`=`	octal: 75

This character is used to denote equality both in mathematics (as in 2+2=4) and in other areas. It is distinct from the Unicode character identical to (U+2261).

>	GREATER-THAN SIGN	`U+003E`	`>`	octal: 76

This character basically denotes a mathematical relation. It is used for some secondary purposes as well, such as an angle bracket. See also notes on using < and > as brackets.

ISO Latin 1 does not contain a greater-than or equal to (U+2265) character as Unicode does. The usual workaround is to use the character pair >= (greater-than sign followed by equals sign).

?	QUESTION MARK	`U+003F`	`?`	octal: 77

This character is basically used as a punctuation character at the end of a direct question. The rules for using it vary from one language to another, and even from one authority to another. For a good summary of one usage style in English, see section Question Mark in NASA SP-7084.

In some languages, some space is left before the question mark. In formal notations such as regular expressions, the question mark has special meanings. It could, for example, be a wildcard character that represents any single character.

Cf. to inverted question mark (¿).

@	COMMERCIAL AT	`U+0040`	`@`	octal: 100

In English, this character was originally used in conjunction with unit prices in the meaning 'each'. Its name still reflects such usage, which is relatively rare. The origin and the most original use of this character is debated.

This character has become most widely known as a separator in Internet E-mail addresses, where it can be read as "at" rather naturally, as in jukkakk@gmail.com. It has many other special uses, too, for example in Perl to indicate that a symbol denotes an array.

A large number of names are used in different languages when referring to this character, quite often using words which try the describe the visual appearance or connotations. See A Natural History of the @ Sign by Scott Herron. The page also contains names for the character in different languages, but they are mostly jargon names or just incorrectly recorded.

In several national variants of ASCII, there is some other character in the code position of this character.

A	CAPITAL LETTER A	`U+0041`	`A`	octal: 101

A basic Latin letter.

B	CAPITAL LETTER B	`U+0042`	`B`	octal: 102

A basic Latin letter. As regards to using B in place of script capital b (U+212C) (denoting Bernoulli function), see notes on letterlike symbols.

C	CAPITAL LETTER C	`U+0043`	`C`	octal: 103

A basic Latin letter. Notice that the copyright sign (©), appearing as C in a circle, is a separate symbol. As regards to using C e.g. in place of double-struck capital c (U+2102), denoting the set of complex numbers), see notes on letterlike symbols.

D	CAPITAL LETTER D	`U+0044`	`D`	octal: 104

A basic Latin letter.

E	CAPITAL LETTER E	`U+0045`	`E`	octal: 105

A basic Latin letter. As regards to using E e.g. in place of script capital e (U+2130), denoting electro-magnetic force, see notes on letterlike symbols.

F	CAPITAL LETTER F	`U+0046`	`F`	octal: 106

A basic Latin letter. As regards to using F e.g. in place of script capital f (U+2131), denoting Fourier transform, see notes on letterlike symbols.

G	CAPITAL LETTER G	`U+0047`	`G`	octal: 107

A basic Latin letter.

H	CAPITAL LETTER H	`U+0048`	`H`	octal: 110

A basic Latin letter. As regards to using H e.g. in place of script capital h (U+210B), denoting Hamiltonian function, see notes on letterlike symbols.

I	CAPITAL LETTER I	`U+0049`	`I`	octal: 111

A basic Latin letter. As regards to using I e.g. in place of black letter capital i (U+2111), denoting imaginary part, see notes on letterlike symbols.

J	CAPITAL LETTER J	`U+004A`	`J`	octal: 112

A basic Latin letter.

K	CAPITAL LETTER K	`U+004B`	`K`	octal: 113

A basic Latin letter. Also used to denote the temperature unit kelvin. (Although Unicode also has character kelvin sign (U+212A), it is just a compatibility character which is compatibility equivalent to letter K.)

L	CAPITAL LETTER L	`U+004C`	`L`	octal: 114

A basic Latin letter. It can be used, among other things, to denote "litre"; the primary symbol for "litre" is small letter l, but since it is easily confused with digit 1 in many fonts, a capital L is often used instead. Notice that the pound sign (£), historically a variant of L, is a separate symbol. As regards to using L in place of script capital l (U+2112), denoting Laplace function, see notes on letterlike symbols.

M	CAPITAL LETTER M	`U+004D`	`M`	octal: 115

A basic Latin letter. As regards to using M in place of script capital m (U+2133), denoting M-matrix, see notes on letterlike symbols.

N	CAPITAL LETTER N	`U+004E`	`N`	octal: 116

A basic Latin letter. As regards to using N e.g. in place of double-struck capital n (U+2115), denoting the set of natural numbers, see notes on letterlike symbols.

O	CAPITAL LETTER O	`U+004F`	`O`	octal: 117

A basic Latin letter. Naturally, this character is distinct from the digit zero (0).

P	CAPITAL LETTER P	`U+0050`	`P`	octal: 120

A basic Latin letter. Notice that the sound recording copyright symbol (U+2117), appearing as P in a circle, does not belong to ISO Latin 1. As regards to using P e.g. in place of script capital p (U+2118), denoting e.g. power set, see notes on letterlike symbols.

Q	CAPITAL LETTER Q	`U+0051`	`Q`	octal: 121

A basic Latin letter. As regards to using Q e.g. in place of double-struck capital q (U+211A), denoting the set of rational numbers, see notes on letterlike symbols.

R	CAPITAL LETTER R	`U+0052`	`R`	octal: 122

A basic Latin letter. Notice that the registered sign (®) appearing as R in a circle, is a separate symbol. As regards to using R e.g. in place of black letter capital r (U+211C), denoting real part, see notes on letterlike symbols.

S	CAPITAL LETTER S	`U+0053`	`S`	octal: 123

A basic Latin letter.

T	CAPITAL LETTER T	`U+0054`	`T`	octal: 124

A basic Latin letter.

U	CAPITAL LETTER U	`U+0055`	`U`	octal: 125

A basic Latin letter.

V	CAPITAL LETTER V	`U+0056`	`V`	octal: 126

A basic Latin letter.

W	CAPITAL LETTER W	`U+0057`	`W`	octal: 127

A basic Latin letter.

X	CAPITAL LETTER X	`U+0058`	`X`	octal: 130

A basic Latin letter.

Y	CAPITAL LETTER Y	`U+0059`	`Y`	octal: 131

A basic Latin letter.

Z	CAPITAL LETTER Z	`U+005A`	`Z`	octal: 132

A basic Latin letter. As regards to using Z e.g. in place of double-struck capital z (U+2124), denoting the set of integers, see notes on letterlike symbols.

[	LEFT SQUARE BRACKET	`U+005B`	`[`	octal: 133

This character is sometimes used as an opening delimiter for parenthetic remarks of some special kind in natural languages, especially when such remarks are nested or they present editorial insertions, corrections, and comments in quoted material and in reference citations. In other languages, there are various uses such as an opening delimiter for an array subscript list. Called opening square bracket in Unicode version 1.0.

In several national variants of ASCII, there is some other character in the code position of this character.

\	REVERSE SOLIDUS	`U+005C`	`\`	octal: 134

This character has various uses in technical contexts, e.g. as a separator in hierarchical file names on Windows and in several "escape notations". The reverse solidus was taken into chararacter repertoires for special usage. Later the use expanded to many technical areas. Note that the reverse solidus is especially suitable for use in "escape notations" just because it is, in a sense, an artificial creation: since it is not used in normal text, it will less likely be confused with normal data characters than other characters used for "escaping". However, confusion may still arise when different notational systems that use the reverse solidus (for different purposes) are combined; see e.g. notes on the reverse solidus in Web authoring.

In Unicode, the reverse solidus is regarded as distinct from set minus (U+2216), which is used in mathematics as an operator on sets (meaning set difference), but conceivably \ can be used as a surrogate for that character.

Called backslash in Unicode version 1.0 and very widely in actual practice.

Rather often the reverse solidus is confused with the solidus (slash) character "/". They are similar in shape, just slanted differently. But they are quite distinct characters and have different uses.

In several national variants of ASCII, there is some other character in the code position of this character.

]	RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET	`U+005D`	`]`	octal: 135

This character is sometimes used as a closing delimiter for special parenthetic remarks in natural languages. In other languages, there are various uses such as an closing delimiter for an array subscript list. Called closing square bracket in Unicode version 1.0.

In several national variants of ASCII, there is some other character in the code position of this character.

^	CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	`U+005E`	`^`	octal: 136

This character is a spacing character which basically represents a diacritic mark. As such, it has little use: it can be used in order to mention the diacritic. Due to its spacing nature, it cannot be used to construct a character with a circumflex accent (such as â). However, a keyboard key labeled with the accent might work as a "composition key" which can used to type characters with the corresponding diacritic.

In practice, circumflex accent is used for a variety of technical purposes e.g. in programming and command languages. It might, for example, be used as an exponentiation operator.

In ASCII, this character had the primary name "upward arrow head", and "circumflex accent" is used there as secondary name only. See notes on diacritics and notes on the circumflex in Character histories.

Called spacing circumflex in Unicode version 1.0.

In several national variants of ASCII, there is some other character in the code position of this character.

_	LOW LINE	`U+005F`	`_`	octal: 137

Probably the most typical use of this character is to make long identifiers more readable in programming languages. Due to their general syntax, such languages generally do not allow spaces in identifiers; but several programming languages allow underscores in identifiers. For example, one could write number_of_events in such languages.

In plain text, e.g. in Usenet discussions, it is customary to use a low line before and after a word or phrase to denote emphasis (e.g. "this is _very_ important") due to lack of better methods.

Called spacing underscore in Unicode version 1.0. The most usual name in practice is probably just "underscore".

This is a spacing character, so it cannot be used to underline text (except through specific processing which goes beyond simple text presentation). See however notes on the low line in Character histories.

`	GRAVE ACCENT	`U+0060`	```	octal: 140

This character is a spacing character which basically represents a diacritic mark. As such, it has little use: it can be used in order to mention the diacritic. Due to its spacing nature, it cannot be used to construct a character with a grave accent accent (such as à). However, a keyboard key labeled with the accent might work as a "composition key" which can used to type characters with the corresponding diacritic.

Sometimes the grave accent is used as a single quote, especially to create the appearance of "smart" (asymmetric) quotes, using the grave accent instead of an opening single quote and either the apostrophe or (less often) the acute accent instead of a closing single quote, as in `this' or `this´. (This is why the grave accent is often called "backquote" in jargon.) Such usage is definitely incorrect nowadays, although it reflects an old idea of dual use for the character; see notes on the grave accent in Character histories. See ASCII and Unicode Quotation Marks by Markus Kuhn. In ISO Latin 1, the apostrophe is the only adequate surrogate for a single quote.

In different notation systems, the grave accent may have various technical uses which have nothing to do with accents. For example, in many Unix shells, the grave accent is a quoting character with a special meaning, "command substitution" (sometimes even called "grave command"!).

In several national variants of ASCII, there is some other character in the code position of this character.

a	SMALL LETTER A	`U+0061`	`a`	octal: 141

A basic Latin letter. Cf. to feminine ordinal indicator (ª).

b	SMALL LETTER B	`U+0062`	`b`	octal: 142

A basic Latin letter.

c	SMALL LETTER C	`U+0063`	`c`	octal: 143

A basic Latin letter. Cf. to cent sign (¢) and c with cedilla (ç).

d	SMALL LETTER D	`U+0064`	`d`	octal: 144

A basic Latin letter.

e	SMALL LETTER E	`U+0065`	`e`	octal: 145

A basic Latin letter. Notice that the estimated symbol (U+212E), also called "EEC sign", similar in appearance to "e" but typically larger), used in European packaging, does not belong to ISO Latin 1. As regards to using e e.g. in place of script small e (U+212F) ("error"), see notes on letterlike symbols.

f	SMALL LETTER F	`U+0066`	`f`	octal: 146

A basic Latin letter.

g	SMALL LETTER G	`U+0067`	`g`	octal: 147

A basic Latin letter. As regards to using it e.g. in place of script small g (U+210A), used as real number symbol, see notes on letterlike symbols.

h	SMALL LETTER H	`U+0068`	`h`	octal: 150

A basic Latin letter. The Planck constant h exists as a separate symbol planck constant (U+210E) in Unicode but as a compatibility character only; it can be presented as an h in italics (e.g. using the markup <I>h</I> in HTML).

i	SMALL LETTER I	`U+0069`	`i`	octal: 151

A basic Latin letter.

j	SMALL LETTER J	`U+006A`	`j`	octal: 152

A basic Latin letter.

k	SMALL LETTER K	`U+006B`	`k`	octal: 153

A basic Latin letter.

l	SMALL LETTER L	`U+006C`	`l`	octal: 154

A basic Latin letter. Used e.g. as a symbol for "litre", but see notes on capital L. As regards to using l e.g. in place of script small l (U+2113) (used as symbol for litre), see notes on letterlike symbols.

m	SMALL LETTER M	`U+006D`	`m`	octal: 155

A basic Latin letter.

n	SMALL LETTER N	`U+006E`	`n`	octal: 156

A basic Latin letter.

o	SMALL LETTER O	`U+006F`	`o`	octal: 157

A basic Latin letter. Cf. to masculine ordinal indicator (º). As regards to using o e.g. in place of script small o (U+2134), used to denote "order", see notes on letterlike symbols.

The letter o has often been used as a "list bullet". However, it might be read - especially by an automatic speech generator - as a word ("oh"), and in any case the use of a letter for such a purpose is illogical. Therefore, use e.g. a hyphen-minus or an asterisk instead. Notice that in the HTML language, you can just use logical elements (UL and LI) to set up lists and leave it up to browsers to present them.

p	SMALL LETTER P	`U+0070`	`p`	octal: 160

A basic Latin letter.

q	SMALL LETTER Q	`U+0071`	`q`	octal: 161

A basic Latin letter.

r	SMALL LETTER R	`U+0072`	`r`	octal: 162

A basic Latin letter.

s	SMALL LETTER S	`U+0073`	`s`	octal: 163

A basic Latin letter. Cf. to sharp s (ß).

t	SMALL LETTER T	`U+0074`	`t`	octal: 164

A basic Latin letter.

u	SMALL LETTER U	`U+0075`	`u`	octal: 165

A basic Latin letter.

v	SMALL LETTER V	`U+0076`	`v`	octal: 166

A basic Latin letter.

w	SMALL LETTER W	`U+0077`	`w`	octal: 167

A basic Latin letter.

x	SMALL LETTER X	`U+0078`	`x`	octal: 170

A basic Latin letter.

The letter x has often been used as a multiplication sign when ASCII characters only are available. In ISO Latin 1, there is no reason to do so; use multiplication sign (×) instead.

Another common usage of x is as a "wildcard"; cf. to the "wildcard" use of asterisk (*). For example, when referring to computer program versions, "4.x" means any version number beginning with "4." (i.e. any minor version of major version 4).

y	SMALL LETTER Y	`U+0079`	`y`	octal: 171

A basic Latin letter.

z	SMALL LETTER Z	`U+007A`	`z`	octal: 172

A basic Latin letter.

{	LEFT CURLY BRACKET	`U+007B`	`{`	octal: 173

This character is (rarely) used as an opening delimiter for parenthetic remarks in natural languages, especially when such remarks are nested. In other languages, there are various uses such as an opening delimiter for a comment or a parameter list.

Called opening curly bracket in Unicode version 1.0. In practice, the word "brace" is often used instead of "curly bracket".

In several national variants of ASCII, there is some other character in the code position of this character.

\|	VERTICAL LINE	`U+007C`	`\|`	octal: 174

This character is probably most typically used in formal languages (such as BNF) between alternatives, corresponding to the word "or". In mathematics, vertical lines are used around an expression to denote its absolute value, e.g. |-42| = 42. In some dictionaries, a vertical line is used to indicate a possible hyphenation point; there is also a quite different dictionary usage: to separate the invariable part of a word from the rest in a paragraph that describes several words that begin the same way (e.g. imitat|e ... -ion ... -ive ...). Several other usages exist, too, especially in technical contexts. In Unix shells, for example, this character is used to denote "piping" (e.g. ls | more means "execute the ls program directing its output to the more program as input").

Called vertical bar in Unicode version 1.0 and in most contexts in practice. However, the word "line" is preferable to "bar", since in Unicode there are several vertical bar symbols, and even light vertical bar (U+2658) is intended to be thicker than vertical line!

In some old fonts (and keyboards), this character appears as a broken vertical line. But notice that in ISO Latin 1, broken bar (¦) is a completely distinct character. See also notes on the vertical line in Character histories.

In several national variants of ASCII, there is some other character in the code position of this character.

}	RIGHT CURLY BRACKET	`U+007D`	`}`	octal: 175

This character is (rarely) used as an closing delimiter for parenthetic remarks in natural languages, especially when such remarks are nested. In other languages, there are various uses such as an closing delimiter for a comment or a parameter list.

Called closing curly bracket in Unicode version 1.0. In practice, the word "brace" is often used instead of "curly bracket".

In several national variants of ASCII, there is some other character in the code position of this character.

~	TILDE	`U+007E`	`~`	octal: 176

This is a spacing character of mixed usage. The word tilde is of Spanish origin and refers to a curly diacritic mark (though in Spanish, the word often denotes the acute accent too!). The name of this character thus reflects one of the originally intended uses. But currently such use has little to do with tilde as a Latin 1 character; it can be basically used just in order to mention the diacritic, but even for that it's not particularly adequate for reasons explained below. Due to its spacing nature, it cannot be used to construct a character with tilde (such as ã or ñ). However, a keyboard key labeled with the accent might work as a "composition key" which can used to type characters with the corresponding diacritic.

In practice, tilde is used for a variety of technical purposes according to specific rules e.g. in programming and command languages. For example, in many Unix shells ~ denotes the user's home directory. Reflecting this tradition, on many Web servers people's Web pages are named in a manner which involves the tilde character. If possible, the use of tilde in Web addresses should be avoided, since it causes various problems, but it has become rather common. In Windows systems, the mapping of Windows filenames to DOS compatible filenames ("8+3 characters") uses tilde; e.g. LONGFILENAME.TXT may get mapped to LONGFI~1.TXT. In the C language, it denotes a bitwise operator that complements each bit. In Perl, it is used in matching operators. So there's little in common between such meanings.

Tilde is often used as a symbol for negation in formal logic, but for that purpose, not sign would be more logical.

Tilde is not the same as tilde operator (U+223C), which is used in meanings like 'varies with', 'is proportional to', 'is similar to', etc. Typically, the glyphs for tilde operator and tilde look rather similar but the latter might be positioned higher with respect to the baseline, reflecting its origin as a diacritic. However, in many fonts tilde does not look like a diacritic at all but rather like an operator.

The Unicode standard contains (on p. 149 in version 3) the following characterization:

Tilde. U+007E tilde can be used either as a Spacing Clone of Combining Tilde [i.e. spacing counterpart of U+0303] - - or more often as a center line tilde similar in appearance to U+223C tilde operator. Two common uses are to indicate an approximate value or in dictionaries to repeat the defined term in the definition of the ~. Although U+007E tilde is ambiguous in its rendering, modern fonts generally render it with a center line glyph, as shown in the code charts.

The Unicode 3.0 standard also mentions (p. 161) that the spacing form of the diacritic tilde is denoted unambiguously by small tilde (U+02DC). Thus, that character would be more adequate (if it can be reliably used) when you wish to mention the diacritic.

In ASCII, the tilde character had the primary name "overline" (and a corresponding appearance; cf. to MACRON); "tilde" was a secondary name only. See notes on diacritics and notes on the tilde in Character histories. See also Mark Pilgrim's History of the tilde.

The Unicode standard includes the tilde into a table of "Unicode Dash Characters", mentioning the synonym swung dash for it.

In several national variants of ASCII, there is some other character in the code position of this character.

	NO-BREAK SPACE	`U+00A0`	` `	octal: 240

This character is used in place of a normal space character as a "binding space", to prevent a line break between words or other expressions. The reason is that programs which process texts, even if the processing is otherwise quite simple, very often reformat the text as regards to division into lines. This means that normal spaces may be replaced by line breaks. In some cases, e.g. when a statement ends with an expression like "number 7.", such processing would lead to unesthetic results. The use of no-break space instead of normal space between "number" and "7." is expected to prevent that.

The ISO 8859-1 standard says this in technical language as follows:

NO-BREAK SPACE (NBSP)

A graphic character the visual representation of which consists of the absence of a graphic symbol, for use when a line break is to be prevented in the text as presented.

Unicode Technical Report #14: Line Breaking Properties specifies more exact semantics. It (normatively) defines that the no-break space character belongs to Non-breaking ("Glue") characters, to which the following applies:

The action of these characters is to glue together both left and right neighbor character such that they are kept on the same line. If they follow a space character, they still allow a break.

In the HTML language, no-break spaces may have other meanings, too. It may have special effects there, and it is generally treated as "non-collapsible" space as opposite to normal space characters, which are "collapsible" in HTML in the sense that any sequence of spaces is equivalent to a single space.

Text processing programs often treat no-break spaces as "non-expandable" in visual formatting, in the following sense: When formatting text lines so that they are justified on both sides, i.e. of equal width, the programs use varying amounts of spacing between words. But when a no-break space is used between words, the programs often keep the spacing between them as constant (and relatively narrow). This is usually quite adequate, since if two words should not be separated by a line break, it's usually good that there won't be much horizontal spacing either.

¡	INVERTED EXCLAMATION MARK	`U+00A1`	`¡`	octal: 241

This character (¡) is used in Spanish, Asturian and Galician at the beginning of an exclamation (which is terminated by a "normal" exclamation mark). Example:

¡Buenos días, señor!

For information (in Spanish) on related grammatical rules, see e.g. De los signos de puntuación on the Spanish language pages by Ricardo Soca.

¢	CENT SIGN	`U+00A2`	`¢`	octal: 242

This character is a currency symbol used in many countries. It is most widely known as the symbol for "cent" as one hundredth of the US dollar.

In the English language, this character is written immediately after a number, e.g. 75¢. It is never used when writing a sum of money which begins with dollar sign ($); in such cases, cents are indicated as fractions of dollar, e.g. $0.75, $49.95.

The currency unit euro is divided into 100 cents; there seems to be no indication that the cent sign would be recommended as a symbol for cent in that meaning. See notes on the euro sign and associates.

£	POUND SIGN	`U+00A3`	`£`	octal: 243

This character is a currency symbol. The Unicode standard mentions the names "pound sterling" and "Irish punt" but marks it as distinct from the lira sign (U+20A4), which has been used as the symbol for Turkish lira and (previously) Italian lira. The pound sign has one crossbar whereas the lira sign has two. On the other hand, the Unicode standard says that "preferred character for lira is 00A3 £".

See notes on the number sign (#), especially as regards to its use as a pound sign in some contexts.

¤	CURRENCY SIGN	`U+00A4`	`¤`	octal: 244

This character is a currency symbol to which no definite semantics has been assigned. It is used very rarely. The most natural semantics for it would probably be that it is a generic currency symbol: a placeholder for actual currency symbols. But there is very little such usage in reality. However, localization settings in Microsoft products may use the currency sign in patterns used to specify the formatting of monetary quantities. For example, "1,1 ¤" might be a setting that tells the system to put the currency symbol (to be specified in another setting) after the number and separated from it with a space.

In the 1960s, the international currency sign ¤ was substituted for the dollar sign $ in one internationalized version of ASCII (ISO 646). The dollar sign was restored later however, and it seems that nobody actually used the currency sign for anything. For some odd reason, it was included into ISO Latin 1 into a code position of its own.

It is advisable to avoid using this character, since its code position is occupied by another character in ISO Latin 9 alias ISO 8859-15, which may replace ISO Latin 1 at least in European usage.

When data in ISO 8859-15 encoding is displayed by a program that does not support that encoding or does not properly recognize information the about encoding, the program typically defaults to displaying the data as if it were ISO 8859-1 encoded. This means that an octet intended to represent the euro sign will be displayed as the currency sign, ¤.

¥	YEN SIGN	`U+00A5`	`¥`	octal: 245

This character (¥) is a currency symbol, with an alternative name "yuan", reflecting its dual use for the currencies of Japan and China. A glyph for the character may have one or two crossbars (with no difference in meaning).

¦	BROKEN BAR	`U+00A6`	`¦`	octal: 246

In some old fonts (and keyboards), the vertical line character appears as a broken line. But in ISO Latin 1, the broken bar is a completely distinct character. Its Unicode 1.0 name is vertical broken bar. There seems to be no good information about the intended or actual usage of this character. The Unicode standard mentions that an alternative name used in typography is "parted rule".

It is advisable to avoid using this character, since its code position is occupied by another character in ISO Latin 9 (alias ISO 8859-15), which will probably widely replace ISO Latin 1 at least in European usage.

§	PARAGRAPH SIGN, SECTION SIGN (SECTION SIGN)	`U+00A7`	`§`	octal: 247

This character (§) is used as a section sign especially in the US, and as a paragraph sign in some European usage, especially when referring to paragraphs in laws, contracts, rules, etc. (For that reason, § is sometimes used to symbolize law in general.) The varying names reflect the variation in usage. Cf. to pilcrow sign (¶).

¨	DIAERESIS	`U+00A8`	`¨`	octal: 250

This character (¨) is a spacing character which basically represents a diacritic mark. As such, it has little use: it can be used in order to mention the diacritic.

The official spelling "diaeresis" conforms to British English; the American spelling "dieresis" is often used in practice. In Unicode 1.0, the name is spacing diaeresis.

The name "umlaut" or "Umlaut" is often used, especially when referring to the use of diaeresis in languages like German where it reflects a phonetic phenomenon called Umlaut. For more information on this, see a news article with subject Umlaut, ablaut, etc. by Christian Weisgerber. As regards to the appearance, especially when used to denote Umlaut in handwritten text, diaeresis often takes a form which looks like tilde or macron.

©	COPYRIGHT SIGN	`U+00A9`	`©`	octal: 251

This character (©) consists of the letter C in a circle, and it means "copyright". It can be used instead of or in addition to the word "copyright", partly because the character is in principle language-neutral and universal. Example:

© 1996 - 1998 Jukka Kalervo Korpela

The example is a copyright notice which satisfies the formalities for copyright protection in some countries. In most countries, there is no such formality requirement, but a notice might still be useful; see 10 Big Myths about copyright explained.

The sound recording copyright symbol (U+2117) (P within a circle) does not belong to ISO Latin 1.

ª	FEMININE ORDINAL INDICATOR	`U+00AA`	`ª`	octal: 252

This character (ª) looks like the letter "a" used as a superscript, often underlined. It is used in Spanish when denoting the feminine ending (-a) of an ordinal number, e.g. in "1ª", read "primera". Cf. to masculine ordinal indicator (º).

«	LEFT ANGLE QUOTATION MARK (LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK)	`U+00AB`	`«`	octal: 253

This punctuation character is often called left guillemet, and it is a quotation mark which is usually used as an opening quotation mark, sometimes as closing.

Angle quotation marks, namely this character and right-pointing double angle quotation mark (»), are often called guillemets. They are mainly used in books. They are used in either "symmetric" or "asymmetric" way, i.e. the opening mark can be similar to the closing mark, or one of the marks can be the opening mark and the other the closing mark. This mainly depends on language. Some examples:

In German usage, they are used asymmetrically so that they "point to" the quoted text: »this way«.
In French, the usage is asymmetric, too, but "pointing away" from the quoted text: « this way ». Notice that French uses spaces to separate the marks from the quoted text; no-break spaces (or "thin no-break spaces", not present in ISO Latin 1) can be used in such a context, to prevent bad line breaks
In Finnish and Swedish the usage is symmetric, using the right angle quotation mark: »this way».
For information on the usage in some other languages, see the document Anführungs- und "Abführungszeichen". Note that in several languages the usage of quotation marks varies, i.e. so that guillemets are used in books and other quotation marks in letters, memos, etc.

For some additional notes on guillemets, see Microsoft's Latin 1 - Punctuation Design Standards.

This character is not the same as the much less-than sign (U+226A); the latter, if needed when only ISO Latin 1 is available, can be simulated using two less-than signs (<<).

In Unicode 1.0, the name is left pointing guillemet. The Unicode standard also mentions that in typography this character is called "chevrons".

¬	NOT SIGN	`U+00AC`	`¬`	octal: 254

This character denotes logical negation, or "not" operator. It is probably used mainly in sentential logic, and even there, the tilde sign is probably more often used to denote negation.

The Unicode standard also mentions that in typography this character is called "angled dash". Assumably reflecting some typographic tradition, MS Word displays an "optional hyphen" (i.e., an invisible hyphenation hint) as ¬ when in "show formatting" ("Show ¶") mode. The idea is probably that the not sign looks like hyphen with a special mark on it. Note that Word's "optional hyphen" is internally presented as a control code (unit separator), not as a soft hyphen (see next entry).

	SOFT HYPHEN	`U+00AD`	``	octal: 255

The soft hyphen character, for which the abbreviation SHY is often used, seems to have different and contradictory meanings in ISO 8859-1 and in Unicode. In the former, SHY is a hyphen-like graphic character to be used at the end of line to indicate that word division has occurred; in the latter, it is an invisible hyphenation hint, a "discretionary hyphen" (which is an alternative name for the character in Unicode). There seems to be little support in widely used programs for soft hyphen in either meaning; the most notable exception is Internet Explorer 5, which treats the soft hyphen as a hyphenation hint - but IE 4 as well as most other Web browsers seem to treat the soft hyphen simply as a graphic character which is always displayed. Thus, you should probably just forget this character. But if you want to get even more confused with it, see my essay Soft hyphen (SHY) - a hard problem?.

®	REGISTERED TRADE MARK SIGN (REGISTERED SIGN)	`U+00AE`	`®`	octal: 256

This character consists of letter R in a circle; it is not classified as a letter but as "other symbol". It is used after a name or other expression, to indicate that it is a registered trade mark (at least in some country). In some countries, the law may require the aknowledgement of (registered) trade marks when mentioning product names in some contexts. See TM Basics by INTA.

There is considerable variation in glyphs for this character. The R inside the circle may have different shapes, but in addition to that, the size and position may vary. For example, in the Lucida Sans Unicode font, ® is a small superscript, whereas in Verdana, ® extends below baseline (making the R in the symbol line up with the baseline) and is relatively large.

The trade mark sign (U+2122) (letters TM in superscript style), used for trade marks which have not been registered but established by continuous use, does not belong to ISO Latin 1. Some confusion has been caused by the fact the trade mark sign belongs to the so-called Windows character set.

¯	MACRON	`U+00AF`	`¯`	octal: 257

This character (¯) is a spacing character with a rather indefinite meaning.

The Unicode standard mentions "overline" and "APL overbar" as synonyms for this character. The latter is not problematic: it simply refers to use in the APL programming language. The former is strange, since Unicode also contains a character with the primary name overline (U+203E), in the General Punctuation block. Probably this is to be interpreted so that macron is distinct from overline. Notice that combining (nonspacing) macron and overline are also distinct characters (U+0304 and U+0305), in the Combining Diacritical Marks block; and combining overline (U+0305) is shown in the Unicode standard with a longer glyph than combining macron (U+0304) (despite the latter having the synonym "long" - it probably refers to the use of the diacritic to denote that a vowel is pronounced long), with the explicit statement that combining overline "connects on left and right".

Thus, it might seem that macron is intended to be a (spacing) diacritic mark, in addition to its special use in APL. And, for example, the transliteration rules for Greek letters in the standard ISO 843 use "i" and "o" with a line above for eta and omega, with the alternative of writing the line above after the letter (i¯, o¯). However, in Unicode there is the separate character modifier letter macron (U+02C9), which is classified under "miscellaneous phonetic modifiers"!

In Unicode 1.0, the name is spacing macron.

As a note mostly of historical value, it needs to be remarked that in ISO 646, the primary name for tilde is "overline" and the primary glyph for it looks like overline. Luckily, such usage seems to be rare if not nonexistent.

°	RING ABOVE, DEGREE SIGN (DEGREE SIGN)	`U+00B0`	`°`	octal: 260

This character denotes degrees. It is used both for temperature degrees (e.g. 100 °F, 38 °C) and when expressing angles in degrees (e.g. 90° angle). Notice that when a temperature is expressed in kelvins, the degree sign is not used; the symbol of kelvin is simply K (e.g. 311 K).

According to the rules of the SI system of units (see Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI)), a space should be used between a numeric value and a unit symbol, with the exception of angle notations like 30°22'8". Note that when the degree sign is used for temperatures, the normal rule applies. A no-break space can be used instead of a normal space to prevent undesired line breaks.

Despite the name of this character in the ISO 8859-1 standard, and despite some fonts showing it as a ring above, it should not be regarded as a diacritic mark, or as anything else than the degree sign for that matter. The reason is that the Unicode standard, in addition to specifying "degree sign" as the only name for it, specifically distinguishes it from ring above (U+02DA), which is listed under "spacing clones of diacritics". It is also distinct from ring operator (U+2218). And it is not to be regarded as superscript 0 either.

However, in practice you may find the degree sign used for different purposes. The Unicode standard even mentions (in 14.2 Letterlike Symbols): "Legacy data encoded in ISO/IEC 8859-1 (Latin-1) or other 8-bit character sets may also have represented the numero sign by a sequence of 'N' followed by the degree sign (U+00B0 DEGREE SIGN). Implementations interworking with legacy data should be aware of such alternative representations for the numero sign when converting data." This statement should be understood as describing legacy data rather than adequate use of the degree sign. If you wish to imitate the appearance of the numero sign, U+2116, then it's probably better to use "N" followed by the letter "o" in smaller font and underlined: No.

The degree sign is not the same as masculine ordinal indicator (º) although the glyphs for the two characters may look similar. Bob Baumel has written some notes on this common confusion.

±	PLUS-MINUS SIGN	`U+00B1`	`±`	octal: 261

This character means 'plus or minus'. It has different uses:

It is sometimes used to refer to two quantities at the same time, as in "the solutions of the equation x²-4=0 are ±2", meaning that the solutions are +2 and -2.
It is also used to indicate an interval of uncertainty in measurements and estimates, as in "according to the measurements, the weight is 42.4 kg ± 0.5 kg"; this means that the weight is expected to be between 42.4 - 0.5 and 42.4 + 0.5 kilograms. Typically, this does not specify absolute limits; the quantity after the ± sign is often some statistical measure like standard deviation. Note that according to the Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI), section 7.7 Clarity in writing values of quantities, notations like 42.4 ± 0.5 kg should not be used; you should either repeat the unit as above or use parentheses: (42.4 ± 0.5) kg to make it "completely clear to which unit symbols the numerical values of the quantities belong".
Yet another (informal) usage seems to be to let ± denote 'about, circa' (e.g. "he is ±50 years old"), which can be quite confusing. The English Style Guide of the Translation Service of the EU explicitly says, in section Mathematical symbols, that ± should not be used to mean "about" or "approximately", only for technical tolerances.

In Unicode 1.0, the name is plus-or-minus sign.

²	SUPERSCRIPT TWO	`U+00B2`	`²`	octal: 262

This character (²) is digit 2 as superscript. Alternative name: "squared". Example of use: m² (square meter). In Unicode 1.0, the name is superscript digit two.

³	SUPERSCRIPT THREE	`U+00B3`	`³`	octal: 263

This character (³) is digit 3 as superscript. Alternative name: "cubed". Example of use: m³ (cubic meter). In Unicode 1.0, the name is superscript digit three.

´	ACUTE ACCENT	`U+00B4`	`´`	octal: 264

This character is a spacing character which basically represents a diacritic mark. Due to its spacing nature, it cannot be used to construct a character with an acute accent (such as á). However, a keyboard key labeled with the accent might work as a "composition key" which can used to type characters with the corresponding diacritic.

Thus the accent itself as a character has little use. It can be used in order to mention the diacritic. In some dictionaries, the acute accent is used to indicate a stressed syllable; usages vary as regards to its placement before or after the stressed syllable or the stressed vowel.

In Unicode 1.0, the name is spacing acute.

Sometimes the acute accent is used as a single quote, especially to create the appearance of "smart" (asymmetric) quotes, using grave accent instead of an opening single quote and acute accent instead of a closing single quote. Such usage is definitely incorrect. In ISO Latin 1, the apostrophe is the only adequate surrogate for a single quote. See ASCII and Unicode Quotation Marks by Markus Kuhn.

The acute accent should not be used instead of the apostrophe in expressions like "don't" or "Jim's" or "o'clock". In writing computer code (source programs, scripts, commands, ...) people sometimes make the mistake of typing the acute accent instead of an apostrophe in quoted strings like 'foo'; and typically this results in errors because compilers and other programs treat the acute as normal data character, not a valid delimiter. See also notes on the use of apostrophe (rather than acute accent) as a surrogate for various characters not in ISO Latin 1.

µ	MICRO SIGN	`U+00B5`	`µ`	octal: 265

This character (µ) corresponds to the prefix "micro-". It is used in the metric system and, more generally, in the SI system of units to denote 'millionth of'. More exactly, it corresponds to a numeric multiplier of 10^-6 (ten to the power -6). For example, "µm" means 'micrometer', i.e. one millionth of a metre. The old, unsystematic name for that unit, "micron", with an old abbreviation consisting of the "µ" character alone, is still used sometimes.

When this character does not belong to the character repertoire in use, e.g. writing texts in ASCII characters only, it is customary to use the letter "u" instead due to some glyph similarity.

This character is historically based on the Greek letter mu (my). In Unicode, these characters are however distinct. But on the other hand, Unicode defines micro sign as a compatibility character which has greek small letter mu (U+03BC) as its compatibility decomposition. The situation is somehow confusing, though; the Unicode standard version 3.0 said:

- - some pairs of characters might have been treated as canonical equivalents but are left unequivalent for compatibility with legacy differences. This situation pertains to U+00B5 µ MICRO SIGN (cf. U+03BC μ GREEK SMALL LETTER MU) - -

The Unicode Standard Version 3.0, p. 74

So they are just compatibility equivalents, not canonical equivalents. The difference, as explained in the Unicode standard, is that replacing a character by its compatibility equivalent may remove formatting information whereas replacing by canonical equivalent will not.

Unicode version 3.0 used a (strongly) slanted glyph for the micro sign and an upright glyph for the mu letter there, as well as in the tables of glyphs (in blocks Latin 1 Supplement and Greek). And this reflected some actual font designs where the micro sign is slanted. However, there seems to be a widespread opinion that the symbol for the SI prefix should not be slanted, or should be just a little slanted.

In Unicode version 4.0, the sample glyphs for the micro sign and the letter mu look very similar, if not identical. In many fonts, however, there are differences, which vary from hardly noticeable to substantial. See a test page showing the micro sign and the mu letter in different fonts.

One might use U+03BC rather than U+00B5 even if the character is used as a micro prefix, provided that the Unicode character U+03BC can be used reliably in the context.

¶	PILCROW SIGN	`U+00B6`	`¶`	octal: 266

This character is a "section sign in some European usage", as the Unicode standard puts it. But for example, according to the description of Spanish punctuation in De los signos de puntuación by Ricardo Soca, such usage is now outdated, and the character is used as a marker for special notes. ("Ahora se emplea en lo impreso para señalar alguna observación especial.")

In old manuscripts, there was a tendency to present a new paragraph by writing a pilcrow sign and continuing in-line, presumably because of the considerable cost of the recording media in those days.

Moreover, the pilcrow sign appears as paragraph sign (and is typically called that way) in some US usage, in much the same way as the paragraph sign (§) is often used in Europe, e.g. so that clause 6 of an agreement or verdict is referred to by "¶ 6" and clauses from 20 to 28 are referred to by "¶¶ 20-28".

In Unicode 1.0, the name is paragraph sign. Cf. to paragraph sign (§); and since usages vary, a confusion between the two characters is thus quite possible.

Many text processing programs display paragraph breaks as ¶ when requested to "show formatting". This does not mean that the data itself (as e.g. saved onto disk) would contain such characters; it's usually just a visual indication on the screen.

·	MIDDLE DOT	`U+00B7`	`·`	octal: 267

In the Unicode standard, this character has alternative names "Georgian comma" and "Greek middle dot" and (in typography) "midpoint", which suggest some intended uses but obviously shouldn't be taken as an exhaustive list.

Unicode contains the character greek ano teleia (U+0387). However, it has the middle dot as its canonical decomposition, and the representative glyph as vertically centered. Thus is debatable whether either of these characters is adequate for use as a Greek punctuation character, since the Greek ano teleia is an upper dot, not a middle dot. It seems that this character was not properly included into the ISO 8859-7 set or into Unicode. However, in several fonts greek ano teleia is an upper dot, not a middle dot, so it is a better punctuation character for Greek texts when it is available.

Examples of other uses:

In the SI system of units, a middle dot, called "half-high dot" or "raised dot" in that context, can be used when denoting the product of two or more units, e.g. "N·m" (newton multiplied by meter). An alternative is to use a space, e.g. "N m". (See section II.4 in the official definition The International System of Units (SI).)
In mathematics, a middle dot is often used as a multiplication symbol. If such a symbol is needed - note that in algebra it is often implied: ab means a multiplied by b - then it is better to use the multiplication sign (×).
In chemistry, a middle dot is used in some cases to separate major parts of complex formula (components of a double salt). Example: K₂SO₄·Al₂(SO₄)₃
In Catalan the middle dot is used to distinguish between "ll" and "l·l" which are pronounced differently. Examples: "Avel·lí", "Apel·les", "Col·legio". Such usage might be the main reason for including this character into ISO Latin 1, since the repertoire is basically designed for writing words in Western European languages. In Unicode, there are separate characters latin capital letter l with middle dot (U+013F) and latin small letter l with middle dot (U+0140), but they are compatibility equivalent to letter L or l followed by the middle dot. However, see Microsoft's Latin 1 - Punctuation Design Standards, which expresses a different view on Catalan middle dots.
As a surrogate for hyphenation point (U+2027), i.e. to indicate correct word breaking as in dic·tion·ar·ies (e.g. in WWWebster).

It is, however, debatable whether the middle point is adequate for use as a multiplication dot in principle. See notes on multiplication symbols in Characters in SI notations.

Note that a raised decimal point should not be interpreted as a middle dot; see notes about full stop (.).

The middle dot is distinct from the following characters: bullet (U+2022), one dot leader (U+2024), bullet operator (U+2219), dot operator (U+22C5), hyphenation point (U+2027). None of these characters belongs to ISO Latin 1; note that Microsoft's Latin 1 - Math Symbols Design Standards gets things very wrong when it claims that the middle dot "is the same as Period centered - U+2219".

The middle dot character is sometimes used as a small bullet, but it is not visually suitable for such use, since the glyph for middle dot is typically a rather small dot (though sometimes it is displayed as a big dot resembling a bullet). In HTML authoring, there is no need for a list bullet character, since you simply present an unordered list using the UL and LI elements, leaving it to browsers to present them (using bullets or otherwise). Moreover, the bullet character is in the so-called Windows character set, so it can be used in text processing fairly safely if desired; but see my document On the use of some MS Windows characters in HTML.)

¸	CEDILLA	`U+00B8`	`¸`	octal: 270

This character (¸) is a spacing character which basically represents a diacritic mark. As such, it has little use: it can be used in order to mention the diacritic. Due to its spacing nature, it cannot be used to construct a character with a cedilla. However, a keyboard key labeled with the accent might work as a "composition key" which can used to type characters with the corresponding diacritic.

Notice that in ISO Latin 1, the only letter with cedilla which you can use is c with cedilla (Ç and ç). There does not seem to be much secondary use for the cedilla character either. In Unicode 1.0, the name is spacing cedilla.

¹	SUPERSCRIPT ONE	`U+00B9`	`¹`	octal: 271

This character (¹) is digit 1 as superscript. In Unicode 1.0, the name is superscript digit one.

º	MASCULINE ORDINAL INDICATOR	`U+00BA`	`º`	octal: 272

This character (º) looks like the letter "o" used as a superscript, often underlined. It is used in Spanish when denoting the masculine ending (-o) of an ordinal number, e.g. in "1º", read "primero". Cf. to feminine ordinal indicator (ª).

This character is definitely not superscript 0 or degree sign.

»	RIGHT ANGLE QUOTATION MARK (RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK)	`U+00BB`	`»`	octal: 273

This character is often called right guillemet, and it is a quotation mark which is usually used as closing quotation mark, sometimes as opening. See usage notes in the description of the left-pointing double angle quotation mark («). Cf. to quotation mark (").

This character is relatively often used on Web pages as an arrow-like symbol, due to its visual appearance. Such usage is questionable, since the character is a quotation mark and could be processed according to that by various programs. See general reasons for being strict about meanings of characters.

This character is not the same as the much greater-than sign (U+226B); the latter, if needed when only ISO Latin 1 is available, can be simulated using two greater-than signs (>>).

In Unicode 1.0, the name is right pointing guillemet.

¼	VULGAR FRACTION ONE QUARTER	`U+00BC`	`¼`	octal: 274

This character (¼) denotes "1/4" as one character. See notes on vulgar fractions. In Unicode 1.0, the name is fraction one quarter.

½	VULGAR FRACTION ONE HALF	`U+00BD`	`½`	octal: 275

This character (½) denotes "1/2" as one character. See notes on vulgar fractions. In Unicode 1.0, the name is fraction one half.

¾	VULGAR FRACTION THREE QUARTERS	`U+00BE`	`¾`	octal: 276

This character (¾) denotes "3/4" as one character. See notes on vulgar fractions. In Unicode 1.0, the name is fraction three quarters.

¿	INVERTED QUESTION MARK	`U+00BF`	`¿`	octal: 277

This character is used in Spanish and (less regularly) in Catalan and Galician, at the beginning of a question (which is terminated by a "normal" question mark). Example:

¿Cómo está usted?

A synonym for the character is "turned question mark".

For information (in Spanish) on related grammatical rules, see e.g. De los signos de puntuación on the Spanish language pages by Ricardo Soca.

À	CAPITAL LETTER A WITH GRAVE ACCENT	`U+00C0`	`À`	octal: 300

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Á	CAPITAL LETTER A WITH ACUTE ACCENT	`U+00C1`	`Á`	octal: 301

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Â	CAPITAL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	`U+00C2`	`Â`	octal: 302

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Ã	CAPITAL LETTER A WITH TILDE	`U+00C3`	`Ã`	octal: 303

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Ä	CAPITAL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS	`U+00C4`	`Ä`	octal: 304

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Å	CAPITAL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE	`U+00C5`	`Å`	octal: 305

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. It is used in Used in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. See usage notes in the description of the corresponding small letter, å.

This character is sometimes used in physics to denote the angstrom (ångström) unit. (In Unicode, there is separate character angstrom sign (U+212B), which is compatibility character with Å as its compatibility decomposition.) The very angstrom unit should be replaced by regular SI units: 1 Å is 0.1 nanometres.

Æ	CAPITAL DIPHTHONG A WITH E (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER AE)	`U+00C6`	`Æ`	octal: 306

This character (Æ) is a separate character which historically originated as a ligature of the basic Latin letters A and E. See usage notes in the description of the corresponding small letter, æ.

Ç	CAPITAL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA	`U+00C7`	`Ç`	octal: 307

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

È	CAPITAL LETTER E WITH GRAVE ACCENT	`U+00C8`	`È`	octal: 310

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

É	CAPITAL LETTER E WITH ACUTE ACCENT	`U+00C9`	`É`	octal: 311

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Ê	CAPITAL LETTER E WITH CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	`U+00CA`	`Ê`	octal: 312

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Ë	CAPITAL LETTER E WITH DIAERESIS	`U+00CB`	`Ë`	octal: 313

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Ì	CAPITAL LETTER I WITH GRAVE ACCENT	`U+00CC`	`Ì`	octal: 314

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Í	CAPITAL LETTER I WITH ACUTE ACCENT	`U+00CD`	`Í`	octal: 315

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Î	CAPITAL LETTER I WITH CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	`U+00CE`	`Î`	octal: 316

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Ï	CAPITAL LETTER I WITH DIAERESIS	`U+00CF`	`Ï`	octal: 317

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Ð	CAPITAL ICELANDIC LETTER ETH (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ETH)	`U+00D0`	`Ð`	octal: 320

This character (Ð) is a letter which was included into ISO Latin 1 due to its use in Icelandic and Faeroese. Although its appearance is typically that of the letter D with stroke, it is not regarded as a letter with a diacritic. It is also distinct from latin capital letter d with stroke (U+0110), which appears in some other ISO Latin alphabets, and from latin capital letter african d (U+0189), although these letters may all look similar.

See usage notes in the description of the corresponding small letter, ð.

In Unicode 1.0, the name is "Latin capital letter ETH".

Ñ	CAPITAL LETTER N WITH TILDE	`U+00D1`	`Ñ`	octal: 321

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Ò	CAPITAL LETTER O WITH GRAVE ACCENT	`U+00D2`	`Ò`	octal: 322

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Ó	CAPITAL LETTER O WITH ACUTE ACCENT	`U+00D3`	`Ó`	octal: 323

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Ô	CAPITAL LETTER O WITH CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	`U+00D4`	`Ô`	octal: 324

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Õ	CAPITAL LETTER O WITH TILDE	`U+00D5`	`Õ`	octal: 325

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. Used in Portuguese to denote nasal "o". Also used in Estonian but denoting a different (non-nasal) vowel.

Ö	CAPITAL LETTER O WITH DIAERESIS	`U+00D6`	`Ö`	octal: 326

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. Cf. to small o with diaeresis.

×	MULTIPLICATION SIGN	`U+00D7`	`×`	octal: 327

This character is a mathematical symbol denoting multiplication. Examples: "2×2 makes 4", where "×" can be read as "times"; "a 5×10 metres area", where "×" can be read as "by". In biology, this character is used when naming hybrids, e.g. Salix ×capreola indicates that the species results from hybridization, and Agrostis stolonifera × Polypogon monspeliensis is a "hybrid formula" that indicates the hybrid of two named species. The Unicode standard mentions an alternative name "z notation Cartesian product", reflecting the usage for Cartesian (direct) product of sets. Cf. to middle dot (·).

Ø	CAPITAL LETTER O WITH OBLIQUE STROKE (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH STROKE)	`U+00D8`	`Ø`	octal: 330

This character is classified as a letter. It is used e.g. in Danish. Cf. to the corresponding small letter, ø. Despite its name--which reflects its origin--it is not regarded as a letter with a diacritic mark.

This letter is not a suitable symbol for the empty set or for diameter, for which there are separate characters in Unicode, namely empty set (U+2205) and diameter sign (U+2300).

Ù	CAPITAL LETTER U WITH GRAVE ACCENT	`U+00D9`	`Ù`	octal: 331

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Ú	CAPITAL LETTER U WITH ACUTE ACCENT	`U+00DA`	`Ú`	octal: 332

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Û	CAPITAL LETTER U WITH CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	`U+00DB`	`Û`	octal: 333

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Ü	CAPITAL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS	`U+00DC`	`Ü`	octal: 334

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Ý	CAPITAL LETTER Y WITH ACUTE ACCENT	`U+00DD`	`Ý`	octal: 335

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

Þ	CAPITAL ICELANDIC LETTER THORN (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER -THORN)	`U+00DE`	`Þ`	octal: 336

This character (Þ) is the a capital letter corresponding to the Latin small letter thorn, þ.

ß	SMALL GERMAN LETTER SHARP s (LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S)	`U+00DF`	`ß`	octal: 337

This character is a letter used in German, and it denotes an "s" sound (unvoiced). It is definitely not the Greek letter beta! A synonym for the name is "ess-zed" (or, according to the Unicode standard, "Eszett"), reflecting an assumed origin of the letter ß as a ligature of "s" and "z", although the origin of ß has also been explained as a ligature of "long s" and "short s". According to the Unicode standard, it is originally a ligature of latin small letter long s (U+017F) and normal "s".

When converting German text into uppercase, this letter is converted to the character pair "SS" (two normal "S" letters).

The use of this character has been affected (reduced, in favor of "ss") by the German orthography reform (basically carried out in 1998 - 2005, later modified slightly). In Swiss German, this character is not used at all; instead, "ss" is written.

à	SMALL LETTER A WITH GRAVE ACCENT	`U+00E0`	`à`	octal: 340

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

This character sometimes appears in languages which do not usually have accented letters, since they use the loanword (French preposition) "à" in a punctuation-like manner, e.g. "5 à 7" meaning '5 to 7', '5--7'.

á	SMALL LETTER A WITH ACUTE ACCENT	`U+00E1`	`á`	octal: 341

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. Rather often it appears as a misspelling of à in Finnish usage at least.

â	SMALL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	`U+00E2`	`â`	octal: 342

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. Used in several languages, e.g. French; also used in latinization of Cyrillic letters according to ISO 9.

ã	SMALL LETTER A WITH TILDE	`U+00E3`	`ã`	octal: 343

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. Used in Portuguese.

ä	SMALL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS	`U+00E4`	`ä`	octal: 344

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

å	SMALL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE	`U+00E5`	`å`	octal: 345

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

This character was formed from "ao" (by writing the "o" above the "a") in the 15th century for use in Swedish orthography. It denotes a sound roughly similar to the one denoted by "a" in English "hall".

The character was taken into use in Norwegian in 1918 and in Danish in 1948, replacing "aa". For example, the name Håkon was previously written Haakon, and the old spelling is still widely used e.g. in texts in English. It is also used in Walloon.

æ	SMALL DIPHTHONG A WITH E (LATIN SMALL LETTER AE)	`U+00E6`	`æ`	octal: 346

This character historically originated as a ligature of the basic Latin letters a and e. Despite this background, and despite the old (Unicode 1.0) name latin small ligature ae, this character is not to be regarded as a ligature but as a separate letter which is not decomposable.

The word "diphthong" is also misleading in this context, since the character does not necessarily, or even usually, denote a combination of vowels pronounced as a diphthong.

This character is used

In some languages (Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Old English, French) as a letter of its own.
As a ligature of a and e, especially when writing Latin words (e.g. "Caesar" might be written as "Cæsar"; but this is not the classical Latin spelling).
In the International phonetic alphabet by IPA, as a phonetic symbol (for a vowel like the one denoted by "a" in the English word "hat").

The Unicode standard mentions an alternative name "ash", which comes from Old English "æsc".

ç	SMALL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA	`U+00E7`	`ç`	octal: 347

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. It is used e.g. in French to denote an "s" sound. It is also used in the international phonetic alphabet by IPA to denote an unvoiced palatal fricative.

è	SMALL LETTER E WITH GRAVE ACCENT	`U+00E8`	`è`	octal: 350

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. Used in several languages, e.g. French; also used in latinization of Cyrillic letters according to ISO 9.

é	SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE ACCENT	`U+00E9`	`é`	octal: 351

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

ê	SMALL LETTER E WITH CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	`U+00EA`	`ê`	octal: 352

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

ë	SMALL LETTER E WITH DIAERESIS	`U+00EB`	`ë`	octal: 353

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. Typically used to indicate that the letter e preserves its own phonetic value instead of being combined with the preceding vowel. Also used in latinization of Cyrillic letters according to ISO 9.

ì	SMALL LETTER I WITH GRAVE ACCENT	`U+00EC`	`ì`	octal: 354

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. Used in Italian and Malagasy.

í	SMALL LETTER I WITH ACUTE ACCENT	`U+00ED`	`í`	octal: 355

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

î	SMALL LETTER I WITH CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	`U+00EE`	`î`	octal: 356

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

ï	SMALL LETTER I WITH DIAERESIS	`U+00EF`	`ï`	octal: 357

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

ð	SMALL ICELANDIC LETTER ETH (LATIN SMALL LETTER ETH)	`U+00F0`	`ð`	octal: 360

This character is a letter which was included into ISO Latin 1 due to its use in Icelandic and Faeroese. It is also used in Old English and in the international phonetic alphabet by IPA. It denotes the voiced sound which is denoted by "th" in modern English (as in the word "the").

This character is distinct from latin small letter d with stroke (U+0111), which appears in some other ISO Latin alphabets and is used in Sáami, Croatian, and Vietnamese. Do not confuse it with greek small letter delta (U+03B4) or partial differential (U+2202) either.

Cf. to the corresponding capital letter, Ð.

ñ	SMALL LETTER N WITH TILDE	`U+00F1`	`ñ`	octal: 361

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

ò	SMALL LETTER O WITH GRAVE ACCENT	`U+00F2`	`ò`	octal: 362

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

ó	SMALL LETTER O WITH ACUTE ACCENT	`U+00F3`	`ó`	octal: 363

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

ô	SMALL LETTER O WITH CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	`U+00F4`	`ô`	octal: 364

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

õ	SMALL LETTER O WITH TILDE	`U+00F5`	`õ`	octal: 365

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. Used in Portuguese and in phonetic writing to denote nasal "o". Also used in Estonian but denoting a different (non-nasal) vowel.

ö	SMALL LETTER O WITH DIAERESIS	`U+00F6`	`ö`	octal: 366

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. It is used in several languages, including German. In English, it has occasionally been used to indicate that vowel "o" be pronounced separately, e.g. in "coöoperation". Such usage is however rare nowadays.

÷	DIVISION SIGN	`U+00F7`	`÷`	octal: 367

This character is a mathematical symbol denoting division. Its intended scope of use is unclear. One might think that in ISO Latin 1, which lacks the Unicode character division slash (described as "generic division operator") one could probably use it as the normal division operator (as in "100÷5 makes 20"). Cf. to the discussion of slashes in the description of solidus. In some numeric keypads of computer keyboards, there is a key with the ÷ symbol, which means multiplication in calculator usage but generates the asterisk * when used for character input.

However, it has been reported that the symbol is also used to denote subtraction:

DIVISION SIGN <÷> should not be used for division, as it is also used for subtraction, the sign is known as "minus" in Denmark. Use SOLIDUS </> instead.

Source: Danish language locale for Denmark, Narrative Cultural Specification.

A Swedish standard on keyboards, SS 66 22 41 version (utgåva) 2, calls the division sign amerikanskt divisionstecken 'American division sign'. The notes on the origin of symbols for division in The History of Mathematical Symbols by Douglas Weaver says about this character: "The Anglo-American symbol for division is of 17th century origin, and has long been used on the continent of Europe to indicate subtraction." And CWA 14094 mentions the division sign as an example of symbols that have culturally dependent meanings. Thus, it is advisable to avoid using this character, except in special occasions where its meaning can be made clear.

ø	SMALL LETTER O WITH OBLIQUE STROKE (LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH STROKE)	`U+00F8`	`ø`	octal: 370

This character is classified as a letter. It is used in Danish, Norwegian and Faroese and in the International phonetic alphabet by IPA. Cf. to the corresponding capital letter, Ø. Despite its name--which reflects its origin--it is not regarded as a letter with a diacritic mark.

ù	SMALL LETTER U WITH GRAVE ACCENT	`U+00F9`	`ù`	octal: 371

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. Used in French and Italian.

ú	SMALL LETTER U WITH ACUTE ACCENT	`U+00FA`	`ú`	octal: 372

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

û	SMALL LETTER U WITH CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	`U+00FB`	`û`	octal: 373

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. Used in several languages, e.g. French; also used in latinization of Cyrillic letters according to ISO 9.

ü	SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS	`U+00FC`	`ü`	octal: 374

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark.

ý	SMALL LETTER Y WITH ACUTE ACCENT	`U+00FD`	`ý`	octal: 375

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. Used in Czech, Slovak, Icelandic, Faroese, Welsh, and Malagasy.

þ	SMALL ICELANDIC LETTER THORN (LATIN SMALL LETTER THORN)	`U+00FE`	`þ`	octal: 376

This character (þ), originally a runic letter, was included into ISO Latin 1 due to its use in Icelandic. It is also used in Old English. It denotes the unvoiced sound which is denoted by "th" in modern English (as in the word "mouth"). The character was taken into Latin script from runic letters, but it is now regarded as distinct from runic letter thurisaz thurs thorn (U+16A6). For historical background and other notes, see the document On the status of the Latin letter ÞORN and of its sorting order by Michael Everson and others.

The Unicode 2.0 standard also mentions IPA in the usage notes for this character, but this is probably a mistake, for the following reasons: This character is not listed in the cross-reference section of the description of the IPA extensions block (which lists e.g. latin small letter eth). The International phonetic alphabet by IPA does not contain any character resembling thorn. On the other hand, there are two characters for dental fricatives, unvoiced and voiced; the latter is obviously eth while the former looks like greek small letter theta (U+03B8), which is actually listed in the cross-reference section mentioned above. (Unicode 3.0 has a more vague statement than "IPA" about the usage, namely "phonetics".)

Cf. to the corresponding capital letter, Þ. See also notes on the "character pair" þÿ below.

ÿ	SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS	`U+00FF`	`ÿ`	octal: 377

This is a separate character composed of a basic Latin letter and a diacritic mark. It is used in French in some names like L'Haÿ; the diaeresis indicates, as usual in French, that each vowel keeps its own pronunciation. Sometimes it is also (incorrectly) used in Dutch in place of latin small ligature ij (U+0133).

Notice that the corresponding capital letter latin capital letter y with diaeresis (U+0178) does not belong to ISO Latin 1. (See some related notes in my document On the use of some MS Windows characters in HTML.)

In most cases where you see a ÿ character, it does not really mean the letter. Instead, it's just the octet 255 decimal displayed according to ISO Latin 1 interpretation of that data. This octet has special uses, due to being the largest numeric value when octets are interpreted as unsigned integers, or the number -1 when octets are interpreted as signed 8-bit integers in two's complement notation. Edward Welbourne has remarked (in an E-mail message):

The lowercase y-dieresis - - has one other use, outside French. Because its ISO 8859 Latin-1 character code is 255, it is very useful in test-data for programs written in C mis-using the built-in getc() function (and its kin): this returns an integer, but a common folly is to store its return value in a character variable... at which point a y-dieresis is indistinguishable from end-of-file. Including a y-dieresis in test data is an easy way to spot this mistake when it has been made!

If you see the character pair þÿ, it is practically impossible that anyone really meant to write a word containing those characters in succession. In addition to being rather rare, globally speaking, they are used in very different contexts. The HTML 4.01 Specification describes, in section Character encodings:

- - to maximize chances of proper interpretation, it is recommended that documents transmitted as UTF-16 always begin with a ZERO-WIDTH NON-BREAKING SPACE character (hexadecimal FEFF, also called Byte Order Mark (BOM)) which, when byte-reversed, becomes hexadecimal FFFE, a character guaranteed never to be assigned. Thus, a user-agent receiving a hexadecimal FFFE as the first bytes of a text would know that bytes have to be reversed for the remainder of the text.

A bit technical, but the idea is that the Unicode character U+FEFF is used as an empty "starter" character so that if the byte (octet) order accidentally gets reversed, the problem can be detected and perhaps even fixed programmatically. And in the UTF-16 encoding, that character is presented as two octets with values FE and FF hexadecimal (254 and 255 decimal). If these octets are interpreted as ISO Latin 1 characters, we get þÿ. Thus, if you see that character pair, you are probably viewing the beginning of a UTF-16 encoded document, using a program which does not interpret it in the intended way but according to the ISO Latin 1 encoding.

Date of last modification: 2006-09-20.

This page belongs to the free information site IT and communication by Jukka "Yucca" Korpela.

Next part: The characters grouped logically, with annotations