U+FFE3 · Modifier symbol
Fullwidth Macron Symbol ￣
￣ is fullwidth macron, U+FFE3. Unicode records it as a compatibility form of ¯ (wide form). It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Modifier symbol.
Also known as
Unicode 1.0 called this character fullwidth spacing macron. The standard renamed it later, but documents, fonts and font-editing tools from that era still use the old name.
What Unicode says about ￣
sometimes treated as fullwidth overline
— annotation from the Unicode Standard, NamesList.txt
Codes & technical data
| Unicode | U+FFE3 | |
|---|---|---|
| HTML hex | ￣ | |
| HTML decimal | ￣ | |
| CSS | \FFE3 | |
| JavaScript | \u{FFE3} | |
| Python | \U0000FFE3 | |
| Java / C# | \uFFE3 | |
| Rust | \u{ffe3} | |
| Swift | \u{FFE3} | |
| PHP | \u{FFE3} | |
| URL encoded | %EF%BF%A3 | |
| UTF-8 bytes | EF BF A3 | |
| UTF-16 bytes | FFE3 | |
| Base64 | 77+j | |
| Decimal | 65507 | |
| Decomposes to | ¯ (wide 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. ￣ is Unicode-only — it has no Latin-1 equivalent, so a system stuck on an 8-bit encoding cannot represent it.
- Size. 3 bytes in UTF-8. Character-limited fields — SMS, bios, some form validators — usually count bytes, not characters.
Unicode cross-references
The standard points readers of ￣ at these characters — usually because they look alike, or because one is the correct choice where the other is often used by mistake.
Nearby in Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms
Latin characters at the width of a CJK ideograph, and katakana at half width — a compatibility block for legacy East Asian encodings. Fullwidth text is often used online for a spaced-out aesthetic; it normalises straight back to ASCII.
How to type ￣
| Windows | Type FFE3 then press Alt+X |
|---|---|
| macOS | Press Ctrl+Cmd+Space, then search for “fullwidth macron” |
| Linux | Press Ctrl+Shift+U, type ffe3, press Enter |
| HTML | ￣ |
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 ￣ fullwidth macron symbol?
- On Windows, type FFE3 and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then ffe3. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
- What is the code for ￣?
- Fullwidth Macron is U+FFE3. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
- Will ￣ survive being pasted anywhere?
- Not always. Fullwidth Macron 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.