How do I type the ¿ inverted question mark symbol?

On Windows, type 00BF and press Alt+X. You can also hold Alt and type 191 on the numeric keypad. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 00bf. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.

What is the code for ¿?

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

What kind of character is ¿?

Inverted Question 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+00BF · Other punctuation

HTML entity

Inverted Question Mark Symbol ¿

¿ is inverted question 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.

Also known as

turned question mark

What Unicode says about ¿

Spanish

— annotation from the Unicode Standard, NamesList.txt

Codes & technical data

Unicode	`U+00BF`
HTML hex	`¿`
HTML decimal	`¿`
CSS	`\00BF`
JavaScript	`\u{00BF}`
Python	`\U000000BF`
Java / C#	`\u00BF`
Rust	`\u{00bf}`
Swift	`\u{00BF}`
PHP	`\u{00BF}`
URL encoded	`%C2%BF`
UTF-8 bytes	`C2 BF`
UTF-16 bytes	`00BF`
Base64	`wr8=`
Decimal	`191`
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+003Fquestion 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 `00BF` then press `Alt`+`X`, or hold `Alt` and type `191` on the numeric keypad
macOS	Press `Ctrl`+`Cmd`+`Space`, then search for “inverted question mark”
Linux	Press `Ctrl`+`Shift`+`U`, type `00bf`, 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 question mark symbol?: On Windows, type 00BF and press Alt+X. You can also hold Alt and type 191 on the numeric keypad. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 00bf. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
What is the code for ¿?: Inverted Question Mark is U+00BF, written in HTML as ¿. In UTF-8 it takes 2 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
What kind of character is ¿?: Inverted Question 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.