When does Dutch write ë, as in België?

When an e starts a new syllable right after another vowel, where readers would otherwise run the two together: België, ideeën, geëmigreerd. Compound words take a hyphen instead, so it's zee-eend, not zeeënd. The trema stays in capitals too, as in BELGIË.

Why does my PowerShell menu show â•¦ instead of ╦?

Windows PowerShell 5.1 reads a script without a byte order mark as Windows-1252, so the three UTF-8 bytes of ╦ come out as â, • and ¦. Save the .ps1 as UTF-8 with BOM and the menu draws correctly. PowerShell 7 assumes UTF-8 for scripts, so the same file works there without the BOM.

ASCII 203

Uppercase E with umlautDouble box T-junction pointing down

ASCII 203 is Ë on Windows and ╦ in old DOS.

Ë (Capital E with Diaeresis) is byte 203 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00CB. It shows up in capitals like NOËL and BELGIË, and Albanian starts words with it, as in Ëndërr (dream). UTF-8 stores it as C3 8B, and 8B in Windows-1252 is the single guillemet ‹, so mangled text reads NOÃ‹L. The HTML entity is Ë.

╦ (Double Down and Horizontal) is byte 203 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+2566. It's the tee on the top edge of an all-double frame or table, where ═ (205) meets a column divider ║ (186) heading down. Batch files are a common place to find it, in menus drawn with echo. cmd reads a .bat file in the console's code page, so a menu saved as UTF-8 prints each ╦ as Γòª on a code page 437 console. Save the file in code page 437, or put chcp 65001 at the top of the script. In UTF-8 it's E2 95 A6, and the HTML entity is &boxHD;.

Latin LetterBox Drawing

Technical Details

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 203 is Ë.
       Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */
    printf("\u00CB\n");   /* UTF-8: C3 8B */

    unsigned char b = 203;         /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */
    printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b);    /* 203 0xCB */
    return 0;
}

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* Byte 203 is ╦ only on a console using code page 437
       (chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal the
       lone byte 0xCB is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */
    putchar(203);

    /* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xCB is -53.
       Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */
    char c = (char)203;
    unsigned char u = 203;
    printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u);   /* -53 203 */

    /* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */
    printf("\u2566\n");          /* E2 95 A6 */
    return 0;
}

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 0203 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00CB and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Option+U, then Shift+E.
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type cb, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, quote, E.
Phone: Tap Shift, then long-press E and pick Ë.

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 203 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. Windows reads it as a DOS code and inserts ╦. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 2566 and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for "box drawings double down and horizontal".
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 2566, 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

When an e starts a new syllable right after another vowel, where readers would otherwise run the two together: België, ideeën, geëmigreerd. Compound words take a hyphen instead, so it's zee-eend, not zeeënd. The trema stays in capitals too, as in BELGIË.

Frequently Asked Questions

Windows PowerShell 5.1 reads a script without a byte order mark as Windows-1252, so the three UTF-8 bytes of ╦ come out as â, • and ¦. Save the .ps1 as UTF-8 with BOM and the menu draws correctly. PowerShell 7 assumes UTF-8 for scripts, so the same file works there without the BOM.

ASCII 203

Uppercase E with umlautDouble box T-junction pointing down

ASCII 203 is Ë on Windows and ╦ in old DOS.

Latin Letter

Box Drawing

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 203 is Ë.

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

printf("\u00CB\n"); /* UTF-8: C3 8B */

unsigned char b = 203; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */

printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 203 0xCB */

return 0;

}

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* Byte 203 is ╦ only on a console using code page 437

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

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

putchar(203);

/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xCB is -53.

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

char c = (char)203;

unsigned char u = 203;

printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -53 203 */

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

printf("\u2566\n"); /* E2 95 A6 */

return 0;

}