How do I type the ¨ diaeresis symbol?

On Windows, type 00A8 and press Alt+X. You can also hold Alt and type 168 on the numeric keypad. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 00a8. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.

What is the code for ¨?

Diaeresis is U+00A8, written in HTML as &Dot;. In UTF-8 it takes 2 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.

Will ¨ survive being pasted anywhere?

Not always. Diaeresis is a compatibility character: any system that applies Unicode NFKC normalisation — search indexes, usernames, identifiers — replaces it with ̈. Use it for display, not where text is normalised.

U+00A8 · Modifier symbol

HTML entity

&Dot;

Diaeresis Symbol ¨

¨ is diaeresis, U+00A8. Unicode records it as a compatibility form of ̈ (compat form). It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Modifier symbol.

Also known as

Unicode 1.0 called this character spacing diaeresis. The standard renamed it later, but documents, fonts and font-editing tools from that era still use the old name.

What Unicode says about ¨

this is a spacing character

— annotation from the Unicode Standard, NamesList.txt

Codes & technical data

Unicode	`U+00A8`
HTML hex	`¨`
HTML decimal	`¨`
CSS	`\00A8`
JavaScript	`\u{00A8}`
Python	`\U000000A8`
Java / C#	`\u00A8`
Rust	`\u{00a8}`
Swift	`\u{00A8}`
PHP	`\u{00A8}`
URL encoded	`%C2%A8`
UTF-8 bytes	`C2 A8`
UTF-16 bytes	`00A8`
Base64	`wqg=`
Decimal	`168`
HTML entity	`&Dot;`
Decomposes to	̈ (compat form)
Category	Modifier symbol (Sk)
Introduced	Unicode 1.1

Will ¨ survive being pasted?

Normalisation. No. Anything that applies NFKC — search indexes, usernames, domain names, programming identifiers — rewrites ¨ as ̈. Safe for display, not for storage.
Legacy encodings. ¨ exists in Latin-1 and Windows-1252, so even software that predates Unicode can store it.
Size. 2 bytes in UTF-8. Character-limited fields — SMS, bios, some form validators — usually count bytes, not characters.

Nearby in Latin-1 Supplement

The upper half of ISO 8859-1: the accented letters and the symbols that Western European printing needed but ASCII had no room for. This is where ° ± × ÷ £ ¥ © ® ½ ¼ live, which makes it the most-copied symbol block in Unicode despite being one of the oldest.

All 29 characters in Latin-1 Supplement →

How to type ¨

Windows	Type `00A8` then press `Alt`+`X`, or hold `Alt` and type `168` on the numeric keypad
macOS	Press `Ctrl`+`Cmd`+`Space`, then search for “diaeresis”
Linux	Press `Ctrl`+`Shift`+`U`, type `00a8`, press `Enter`
HTML	`&Dot;`

About Unicode’s Modifier symbol category

This is a modifier symbol — a free-standing character that looks like an accent but is not combined with the letter before it. Word processors treat it as its own character, so it can be selected and deleted on its own.

Frequently asked questions

How do I type the ¨ diaeresis symbol?: On Windows, type 00A8 and press Alt+X. You can also hold Alt and type 168 on the numeric keypad. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 00a8. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
What is the code for ¨?: Diaeresis is U+00A8, written in HTML as &Dot;. In UTF-8 it takes 2 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
Will ¨ survive being pasted anywhere?: Not always. Diaeresis is a compatibility character: any system that applies Unicode NFKC normalisation — search indexes, usernames, identifiers — replaces it with ̈. Use it for display, not where text is normalised.