Is š the same as Turkish ş?

They stand for the same sh sound but are different letters. Czech, Slovak, Croatian and Slovenian write š with a caron, Turkish writes ş with a cedilla, and Romanian writes ș with a comma below. Keep each name in its own letter. Windows-1252 only has š, so Turkish text needs Windows-1254 or UTF-8, and Romanian ș needs UTF-8.

German headings in old files start with š, like šbersicht

The š is a capital Ü. DOS code pages keep Ü at byte 154, where Windows-1252 has š, so a DOS export turns Übersicht into šbersicht. Only the capital does this. Lowercase ü sits at 129, which Windows-1252 leaves empty, so it simply drops out. Perl converts the file: `perl -MEncode -pe '$_ = encode("UTF-8", decode("cp850", $_))' old.txt > new.txt`.

ASCII 154

Lowercase s with caronUppercase U with umlaut

ASCII 154 is š on Windows and Ü in old DOS.

š (Small S with Caron) is byte 154 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+0161. It's the sh sound in šest, six in Czech and Croatian, and Finnish borrows it for loanwords such as šakki. If Central European text shows ¹ where š belongs, check for ISO-8859-2 (Latin-2) being read as Windows-1252. Latin-2 stores š at 0xB9, not at Windows-1250's 0x9A, and B9 in Windows-1252 is the superscript one. So the right fix there is ISO-8859-2, not Windows-1250. Garbled UTF-8 shows it as Å¡, from its bytes C5 A1. The capital Š is byte 138. The HTML entity is &scaron;.

Ü (Capital U with Umlaut) is byte 154 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+00DC. Windows-1252 has small š at 154, so German DOS text read as Windows-1252 turns Übersicht into šbersicht, a capital turned into a small Czech letter. Code page 850 kept Ü at 154 too. Small ü is 129 in DOS.

Latin LetterLatin Letter

Technical Details

Code Example

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#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 154 is š.
       Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */
    printf("\u0161\n");   /* UTF-8: C5 A1 */

    unsigned char b = 154;         /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */
    printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b);    /* 154 0x9A */
    return 0;
}

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* Byte 154 is Ü only on a console using code page 437
       (chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal the
       lone byte 0x9A is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */
    putchar(154);

    /* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0x9A is -102.
       Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */
    char c = (char)154;
    unsigned char u = 154;
    printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u);   /* -102 154 */

    /* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */
    printf("\u00DC\n");          /* C3 9C */
    return 0;
}

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 0154 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 0161 and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for "latin small letter s with caron".
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 161, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, c, s.
Phone: iPhone: long-press s and pick š. Android (Gboard): tap the character at the top of this page to copy it.

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 154 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. Windows reads it as a DOS code and inserts Ü.

Ü is also ASCII 220 on Windows, which has the full guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

They stand for the same sh sound but are different letters. Czech, Slovak, Croatian and Slovenian write š with a caron, Turkish writes ş with a cedilla, and Romanian writes ș with a comma below. Keep each name in its own letter. Windows-1252 only has š, so Turkish text needs Windows-1254 or UTF-8, and Romanian ș needs UTF-8.
The š is a capital Ü. DOS code pages keep Ü at byte 154, where Windows-1252 has š, so a DOS export turns Übersicht into šbersicht. Only the capital does this. Lowercase ü sits at 129, which Windows-1252 leaves empty, so it simply drops out. Perl converts the file: `perl -MEncode -pe '$_ = encode("UTF-8", decode("cp850", $_))' old.txt > new.txt`.

Frequently Asked Questions

The š is a capital Ü. DOS code pages keep Ü at byte 154, where Windows-1252 has š, so a DOS export turns Übersicht into šbersicht. Only the capital does this. Lowercase ü sits at 129, which Windows-1252 leaves empty, so it simply drops out. Perl converts the file: `perl -MEncode -pe '$_ = encode("UTF-8", decode("cp850", $_))' old.txt > new.txt`.

ASCII 154

Lowercase s with caronUppercase U with umlaut

ASCII 154 is š on Windows and Ü in old DOS.

Latin Letter

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 154 is š.

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

printf("\u0161\n"); /* UTF-8: C5 A1 */

unsigned char b = 154; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */

printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 154 0x9A */

return 0;

}

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* Byte 154 is Ü only on a console using code page 437

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

lone byte 0x9A is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */

putchar(154);

/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0x9A is -102.

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

char c = (char)154;

unsigned char u = 154;

printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -102 154 */

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

printf("\u00DC\n"); /* C3 9C */

return 0;

}