How do I type the ¡ inverted exclamation mark symbol?

On Windows, type 00A1 and press Alt+X. You can also hold Alt and type 161 on the numeric keypad. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 00a1. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.

What is the code for ¡?

Inverted Exclamation Mark is U+00A1, written in HTML as ¡. In UTF-8 it takes 2 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.

What kind of character is ¡?

Inverted Exclamation Mark is filed under Other punctuation in the Latin-1 Supplement block, and was introduced in Unicode 1.1. Unicode files this under "other punctuation", the category for marks that are not brackets, dashes or quotes.

U+00A1 · Other punctuation

HTML entity

Inverted Exclamation Mark Symbol ¡

¡ is inverted exclamation mark. Write it in HTML as ¡ or paste the character directly. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Other punctuation.

What Unicode says about ¡

Spanish, Asturian, Galician

used in extended IPA to represent sublaminal lower alveolar percussive

— annotation from the Unicode Standard, NamesList.txt

Codes & technical data

Unicode	`U+00A1`
HTML hex	`¡`
HTML decimal	`¡`
CSS	`\00A1`
JavaScript	`\u{00A1}`
Python	`\U000000A1`
Java / C#	`\u00A1`
Rust	`\u{00a1}`
Swift	`\u{00A1}`
PHP	`\u{00A1}`
URL encoded	`%C2%A1`
UTF-8 bytes	`C2 A1`
UTF-16 bytes	`00A1`
Base64	`wqE=`
Decimal	`161`
HTML entity	`¡`
Category	Other punctuation (Po)
Introduced	Unicode 1.1

Will ¡ survive being pasted?

Normalisation. Yes. ¡ is unchanged by NFKC, so it survives normalising systems intact.
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.

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.

!U+0021exclamation mark

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 `00A1` then press `Alt`+`X`, or hold `Alt` and type `161` on the numeric keypad
macOS	Press `Ctrl`+`Cmd`+`Space`, then search for “inverted exclamation mark”
Linux	Press `Ctrl`+`Shift`+`U`, type `00a1`, press `Enter`
HTML	`¡`

About Unicode’s Other punctuation category

Unicode files this under "other punctuation", the category for marks that are not brackets, dashes or quotes.

Frequently asked questions

How do I type the ¡ inverted exclamation mark symbol?: On Windows, type 00A1 and press Alt+X. You can also hold Alt and type 161 on the numeric keypad. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 00a1. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
What is the code for ¡?: Inverted Exclamation Mark is U+00A1, written in HTML as ¡. In UTF-8 it takes 2 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
What kind of character is ¡?: Inverted Exclamation Mark is filed under Other punctuation in the Latin-1 Supplement block, and was introduced in Unicode 1.1. Unicode files this under "other punctuation", the category for marks that are not brackets, dashes or quotes.