ASCII 174
Registered signLeft angle quotes
ASCII 174 is ® on Windows and « in old DOS.
® (Registered Sign) is byte 174 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00AE. It marks a trademark that has actually been registered and belongs only on those; a claimed but unregistered mark gets ™ (byte 153). The design problem is size. Fonts draw ™ small and raised, but some draw ® at full capital height, so it can tower over the brand name next to it. Setting it in a sup element with a smaller font size brings it in line. Ⓡ (U+24C7), a circled capital R from the enclosed alphanumerics block, looks close but isn't the registered sign, and search won't treat the two as equal. If a page shows ®, its UTF-8 bytes C2 AE were read as Windows-1252. The HTML entity is ®.
« (Left Guillemet) is byte 174 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+00AB. Its partner » is the next byte, 175. Windows-1252 has the registered sign ® at 174, so French DOS text read as Windows-1252 turns « comme ça » into ® comme ‡a ¯, since ç and » break too. Code page 850 kept « at 174 too.
Technical Details
Technical Details
Code Example
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#include <stdio.h>int main(void) {/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 174 is ®.Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */printf("\u00AE\n"); /* UTF-8: C2 AE */unsigned char b = 174; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 174 0xAE */return 0;}
Code Example
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#include <stdio.h>int main(void) {/* Byte 174 is « only on a console using code page 437(chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal thelone byte 0xAE is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */putchar(174);/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xAE is -82.Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */char c = (char)174;unsigned char u = 174;printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -82 174 *//* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */printf("\u00AB\n"); /* C2 AB */return 0;}
How to Type It
- Windows
- Hold Alt and type 0174 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00AE and press Alt+X.
- Mac
- Press Option+R.
- Linux
- In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type ae, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, o, r.
- Phone
- iPhone: tap the character at the top of this page to copy it. Android (Gboard): tap ?123, then =\< and tap ®.
How to Type It
- Windows
- Hold Alt and type 174 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. Windows reads it as a DOS code and inserts «.
« is also ASCII 171 on Windows, which has the full guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
No law requires it on every mention. Marking the most prominent use, or the first one in running text, gives the notice, and later mentions can go without it. That notice matters in the US: if you never show ® or a written registration notice, you can't recover damages from an infringer who didn't know about the registration.
Right after the registered mark itself, with no space: Blue Tern® running shoes, not Blue Tern running shoes®. If only the logo is registered and not the name, the ® belongs on the logo and the name in your text goes without it.
® isn't in the GSM-7 alphabet that standard SMS uses, so a single ® switches the whole message to UCS-2 encoding. That cuts the limit from 160 characters to 70, and to 67 per part once the message is split. © and ™ are missing from GSM-7 too, so leave the symbols out of texts. The registration applies either way.
« is what 174 means in the DOS code page, and that's the table Alt codes use when you leave out the zero. Alt+0174 switches to Windows-1252 and gives ®. On Western European PCs, whose DOS code page is 850, there's also a short code for ®: Alt+169.
It's a DOS file read as Windows-1252, which puts ® and ¯ on the two bytes where code pages 437 and 850 keep « and ». So «Bonjour» turns into ®Bonjour¯, and the accented letters in the same file break too. Decode it as DOS text when you import it, for example with `iconv('CP850', 'UTF-8', $text)` in PHP.
Frequently Asked Questions
« is what 174 means in the DOS code page, and that's the table Alt codes use when you leave out the zero. Alt+0174 switches to Windows-1252 and gives ®. On Western European PCs, whose DOS code page is 850, there's also a short code for ®: Alt+169.
It's a DOS file read as Windows-1252, which puts ® and ¯ on the two bytes where code pages 437 and 850 keep « and ». So «Bonjour» turns into ®Bonjour¯, and the accented letters in the same file break too. Decode it as DOS text when you import it, for example with `iconv('CP850', 'UTF-8', $text)` in PHP.