Should I write Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast?

Côte d'Ivoire. The country asked in 1985 to be called by its French name in every language, and the UN and most governments follow that. Keep the ô, and pick one apostrophe for the whole site, since a search for Côte d'Ivoire with a straight ' won't match d’Ivoire typed with the curly one.

ASCII 212

Uppercase O with circumflexBox bottom-left corner, double horizontal

ASCII 212 is Ô on Windows and ╘ in old DOS.

Ô (Capital O with Circumflex) is byte 212 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00D4. French needs it in capitals like HÔTEL and in the country name CÔTE D'IVOIRE, Brazilian Portuguese starts Ônibus (bus) with it, and Vietnamese treats Ô as a letter of its own. UTF-8 stores it as C3 94, and 94 is the closing curly quote ” in Windows-1252, so mangled text reads HÃ”TEL, with a quotation mark closing in the middle of a word. The HTML entity is Ô.

╘ (Single Up, Double Right) is byte 212 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+2558. It's the bottom-left corner of a box with double top and bottom edges and single sides: │ (179) comes down and ═ (205) runs right. Python's tabulate closes its fancy_grid tables with it, as in ╘═══╛. The piece didn't make it into code page 850, which uses this byte for È, so a frame written in code page 437 and read as 850 ends with È═══¥ instead. In UTF-8 it's E2 95 98, and the HTML entity is &boxuR;.

Latin LetterBox Drawing

Technical Details

Code Example

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#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 212 is Ô.
       Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */
    printf("\u00D4\n");   /* UTF-8: C3 94 */

    unsigned char b = 212;         /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */
    printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b);    /* 212 0xD4 */
    return 0;
}

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* Byte 212 is ╘ only on a console using code page 437
       (chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal the
       lone byte 0xD4 is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */
    putchar(212);

    /* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xD4 is -44.
       Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */
    char c = (char)212;
    unsigned char u = 212;
    printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u);   /* -44 212 */

    /* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */
    printf("\u2558\n");          /* E2 95 98 */
    return 0;
}

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 0212 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00D4 and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Option+Shift+J.
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type d4, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, caret, O.
Phone: Tap Shift, then long-press O and pick Ô.

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 212 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. US PCs insert ╘, but PCs set to code page 850, common in Western Europe, insert È. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 2558 and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for "box drawings up single and right double".
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 2558, 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

Côte d'Ivoire. The country asked in 1985 to be called by its French name in every language, and the UN and most governments follow that. Keep the ô, and pick one apostrophe for the whole site, since a search for Côte d'Ivoire with a straight ' won't match d’Ivoire typed with the curly one.

ASCII 212

Uppercase O with circumflexBox bottom-left corner, double horizontal

ASCII 212 is Ô on Windows and ╘ in old DOS.

Latin Letter

Box Drawing

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 212 is Ô.

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

printf("\u00D4\n"); /* UTF-8: C3 94 */

unsigned char b = 212; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */

printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 212 0xD4 */

return 0;

}

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* Byte 212 is ╘ only on a console using code page 437

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

lone byte 0xD4 is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */

putchar(212);

/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xD4 is -44.

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

char c = (char)212;

unsigned char u = 212;

printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -44 212 */

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

printf("\u2558\n"); /* E2 95 98 */

return 0;

}