ASCII 180
Acute accentBox T-junction pointing left
ASCII 180 is ´ on Windows and ┤ in old DOS.
´ (Acute Accent) is byte 180 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00B4. It's the accent from é standing alone as a spacing character. German and several other European keyboards give it a dead key next to Backspace, and pressed before a space it produces ´ by itself, which is how it ends up as a fake apostrophe: geht´s, don´t. Neither matches a search for the real apostrophe. The correct characters are the ASCII ' (0x27) or the typographic ’ (byte 146), and a find-and-replace from ´ to one of them cleans up text typed this way. In UTF-8 it's C2 B4, which misreads as ´. The HTML entity is ´.
┤ (Light Vertical and Left) is byte 180 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+2524. It's a single-line tee on the right edge of a box, where a horizontal divider ─ (196) meets the side │ (179). The name confuses people: Unicode names box pieces by the directions their lines run from the center, so this right-edge tee is vertical and left, and its left-edge partner ├ (195) is vertical and right. A search for right tee can land on the wrong one. In UTF-8 it's E2 94 A4. The HTML entity is ┤.
Technical Details
Technical Details
Code Example
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#include <stdio.h>int main(void) {/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 180 is ´.Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */printf("\u00B4\n"); /* UTF-8: C2 B4 */unsigned char b = 180; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 180 0xB4 */return 0;}
Code Example
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#include <stdio.h>int main(void) {/* Byte 180 is ┤ only on a console using code page 437(chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal thelone byte 0xB4 is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */putchar(180);/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xB4 is -76.Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */char c = (char)180;unsigned char u = 180;printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -76 180 *//* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */printf("\u2524\n"); /* E2 94 A4 */return 0;}
How to Type It
- Windows
- Hold Alt and type 0180 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00B4 and press Alt+X.
- Mac
- Press Option+Shift+E. Option+] gives ‘ (left single quotation mark), which looks similar but is a different character.
- Linux
- In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type b4, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, apostrophe, apostrophe.
- Phone
- The ' key types a quotation mark, which is a different character. Tap the character at the top of this page to copy it.
How to Type It
- Windows
- Hold Alt and type 180 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. Windows reads it as a DOS code and inserts ┤. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 2524 and press Alt+X.
- Mac
- Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for "box drawings light vertical and left".
- Linux
- In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 2524, then Space.
- Phone
- Phone keyboards have no key for it. Tap the character at the top of this page to copy it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Python found an acute accent where it expected a quote mark. String literals only take the ASCII quotes ' and ", so replace the ´ with one of those. Check the neighboring quotes while you're there, since code pasted out of a word processor can bring ’ and “ along, and Python rejects those the same way.
Because the backtick is a different character, ` (U+0060), and both MySQL identifier quoting and Markdown code spans accept only that one. On a German layout it sits on the same key as ´: hold Shift, press the key, then press Space so the dead key produces the mark on its own.
Better not. Feet and inches, like minutes and seconds in coordinates, take the prime ′ (U+2032) and double prime ″ (U+2033), or ' and " in plain ASCII. Two ´ in a row are two separate accents, so a parser or search looking for ″ or " won't read 5´10´´ as a height at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
Because ┤ only joins single lines, and ═ is double. Where a double divider meets a single frame, use ╡ (181). Where both lines are double, use ╣ (185), and ╢ (182) covers a double frame with a single divider. Code page 850 swapped ╡ and ╢ for Á and Â, so boxes using them break on Western European DOS setups.