How do I type the ¯ macron symbol?

On Windows, type 00AF and press Alt+X. You can also hold Alt and type 175 on the numeric keypad. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 00af. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.

What is the code for ¯?

Macron is U+00AF, written in HTML as ¯. In UTF-8 it takes 2 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.

Will ¯ survive being pasted anywhere?

Not always. 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.

U+00AF · Modifier symbol

HTML entity

Macron Symbol ¯

¯ is macron, U+00AF. Unicode also records it as “overline”. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Modifier symbol.

Also known as

overline
APL overbar

Unicode 1.0 called this character 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 ¯

this is a spacing character

unlike 203E, adjacent instances of this character do not join

— annotation from the Unicode Standard, NamesList.txt

Codes & technical data

Unicode	`U+00AF`
HTML hex	`¯`
HTML decimal	`¯`
CSS	`\00AF`
JavaScript	`\u{00AF}`
Python	`\U000000AF`
Java / C#	`\u00AF`
Rust	`\u{00af}`
Swift	`\u{00AF}`
PHP	`\u{00AF}`
URL encoded	`%C2%AF`
UTF-8 bytes	`C2 AF`
UTF-16 bytes	`00AF`
Base64	`wq8=`
Decimal	`175`
HTML entity	`¯`
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.

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+203Eoverline

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 `00AF` then press `Alt`+`X`, or hold `Alt` and type `175` on the numeric keypad
macOS	Press `Ctrl`+`Cmd`+`Space`, then search for “macron”
Linux	Press `Ctrl`+`Shift`+`U`, type `00af`, 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 ¯ macron symbol?: On Windows, type 00AF and press Alt+X. You can also hold Alt and type 175 on the numeric keypad. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 00af. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
What is the code for ¯?: Macron is U+00AF, written in HTML as ¯. In UTF-8 it takes 2 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
Will ¯ survive being pasted anywhere?: Not always. 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.