Is Ž the same as the Polish Ż?

No. Polish uses Ż with a dot and Ź with an acute, but never Ž, which belongs to Czech, Slovak, Croatian and the Baltic languages. Windows-1252 has Ž and no Ż, so Polish text squeezed into it sometimes comes out with the caron version, which Polish readers see as a misspelling. Windows-1250 and UTF-8 both have Ż.

Where do the Ž letters in my German DOS export come from?

They're capital Ä. Code pages 437 and 850 store Ä as byte 142, and Windows-1252 has Ž there, so ähnlich written with a capital arrives as Žhnlich. Lowercase ä breaks too, into „, so a German file with both scattered through it is DOS text from start to finish. When it's a CSV, bring it into Excel through the text import and set the file origin to code page 850.

ASCII 142

Uppercase Z with caronUppercase A with umlaut

ASCII 142 is Ž on Windows and Ä in old DOS.

Ž (Capital Z with Caron) is byte 142 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+017D. The caron gives it a zh sound, like the s in measure, in Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Croatian and the Baltic languages: Žilina, Žalgiris. Watch the HTML entity. &Zcaron; is valid HTML5 but wasn't in the HTML 4 entity list, even though &Scaron; was, so older parsers and tools built on that list leave it as literal text. The numeric Ž works everywhere. In UTF-8 it's C5 BD, which misreads as Å½. Lowercase ž is byte 158.

Ä (Capital A with Umlaut) is byte 142 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+00C4. Windows-1252 has Ž at 142, so German DOS text read as Windows-1252 turns Ärger into Žrger. Code page 850 kept Ä at 142 too. Old DOS code that changes case with arithmetic breaks here. In ASCII, capital and small letters sit 32 apart, but in code page 437 small ä is 132 and Ä is 142, so subtracting 32 from ä gives 100, a plain d.

Latin LetterLatin Letter

Technical Details

Code Example

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#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 142 is Ž.
       Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */
    printf("\u017D\n");   /* UTF-8: C5 BD */

    unsigned char b = 142;         /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */
    printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b);    /* 142 0x8E */
    return 0;
}

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* Byte 142 is Ä only on a console using code page 437
       (chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal the
       lone byte 0x8E is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */
    putchar(142);

    /* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0x8E is -114.
       Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */
    char c = (char)142;
    unsigned char u = 142;
    printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u);   /* -114 142 */

    /* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */
    printf("\u00C4\n");          /* C3 84 */
    return 0;
}

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 0142 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 017D and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for "latin capital letter z with caron".
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 17d, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, c, Z.
Phone: iPhone: tap Shift, long-press Z and pick Ž. Android (Gboard): tap the character at the top of this page to copy it.

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 142 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. Windows reads it as a DOS code and inserts Ä.

Ä is also ASCII 196 on Windows, which has the full guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

No. Polish uses Ż with a dot and Ź with an acute, but never Ž, which belongs to Czech, Slovak, Croatian and the Baltic languages. Windows-1252 has Ž and no Ż, so Polish text squeezed into it sometimes comes out with the caron version, which Polish readers see as a misspelling. Windows-1250 and UTF-8 both have Ż.
They're capital Ä. Code pages 437 and 850 store Ä as byte 142, and Windows-1252 has Ž there, so ähnlich written with a capital arrives as Žhnlich. Lowercase ä breaks too, into „, so a German file with both scattered through it is DOS text from start to finish. When it's a CSV, bring it into Excel through the text import and set the file origin to code page 850.

Frequently Asked Questions

They're capital Ä. Code pages 437 and 850 store Ä as byte 142, and Windows-1252 has Ž there, so ähnlich written with a capital arrives as Žhnlich. Lowercase ä breaks too, into „, so a German file with both scattered through it is DOS text from start to finish. When it's a CSV, bring it into Excel through the text import and set the file origin to code page 850.

ASCII 142

Uppercase Z with caronUppercase A with umlaut

ASCII 142 is Ž on Windows and Ä in old DOS.

Latin Letter

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 142 is Ž.

Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */

printf("\u017D\n"); /* UTF-8: C5 BD */

unsigned char b = 142; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */

printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 142 0x8E */

return 0;

}

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* Byte 142 is Ä only on a console using code page 437

(chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal the

lone byte 0x8E is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */

putchar(142);

/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0x8E is -114.

Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */

char c = (char)142;

unsigned char u = 142;

printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -114 142 */

/* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */

printf("\u00C4\n"); /* C3 84 */

return 0;

}