Why do Italian subtitles show PIÃ™ instead of PIÙ?

The subtitle file is UTF-8 and your player is decoding it as Windows-1252. Set the player's subtitle encoding to UTF-8, or re-save the .srt as UTF-8 with a BOM so the player can recognize it without being told. Fixing lines by hand won't get you far, since every accented letter in the file is broken the same way.

Is it OK to write PIU' instead of PIÙ?

Only as a stopgap. The apostrophe form comes from keyboards and typewriters without capital accented letters, and in edited text it counts as a mistake, just like E' for È. It also breaks search, because PIU' won't match più. If a keyboard can't produce Ù, fix the input method instead of the spelling.

Why does the bottom of my DOS box read ÀÄÄÄÙ?

The file is in code page 437 and your editor is using Windows-1252, which puts letters where the box pieces were: └ (192) becomes À, ─ (196) becomes Ä and ┘ becomes Ù. Don't search and replace them. Switch the editor's encoding to code page 437, which some editors list as OEM-US and others as DOS, then save the file as UTF-8.

ASCII 217

Uppercase U with grave accentBox bottom-right corner

ASCII 217 is Ù on Windows and ┘ in old DOS.

Ù (Capital U with Grave) is byte 217 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00D9. It shows up in Italian capitals like PIÙ and GIÙ, and in French only when OÙ is set in capitals. UTF-8 stores it as C3 99, and 99 is the trademark sign ™ in Windows-1252, so a mangled Italian sign reads PIÃ™, which looks more like a brand name than a broken letter. The HTML entity is Ù.

┘ (Light Up and Left) is byte 217 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+2518. It closes a single-line box at the bottom right, where │ (179) comes down and ─ (196) arrives from the left. The four single corners are scattered in code page 437: ┐ and └ sit together at 191 and 192, ┘ and ┌ at 217 and 218. Unicode orders them ┌ ┐ └ ┘ from U+250C in steps of 4, so converting between the two needs a lookup table, not an offset. In UTF-8 it's E2 94 98, and the HTML entity is &boxul;.

Latin LetterBox Drawing

Technical Details

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 217 is Ù.
       Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */
    printf("\u00D9\n");   /* UTF-8: C3 99 */

    unsigned char b = 217;         /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */
    printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b);    /* 217 0xD9 */
    return 0;
}

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* Byte 217 is ┘ only on a console using code page 437
       (chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal the
       lone byte 0xD9 is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */
    putchar(217);

    /* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xD9 is -39.
       Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */
    char c = (char)217;
    unsigned char u = 217;
    printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u);   /* -39 217 */

    /* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */
    printf("\u2518\n");          /* E2 94 98 */
    return 0;
}

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 0217 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00D9 and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Option+`, then Shift+U.
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type d9, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, backtick, U.
Phone: Tap Shift, then long-press U and pick Ù.

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 217 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. Windows reads it as a DOS code and inserts ┘. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 2518 and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for "box drawings light up and left".
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 2518, 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

The subtitle file is UTF-8 and your player is decoding it as Windows-1252. Set the player's subtitle encoding to UTF-8, or re-save the .srt as UTF-8 with a BOM so the player can recognize it without being told. Fixing lines by hand won't get you far, since every accented letter in the file is broken the same way.
Only as a stopgap. The apostrophe form comes from keyboards and typewriters without capital accented letters, and in edited text it counts as a mistake, just like E' for È. It also breaks search, because PIU' won't match più. If a keyboard can't produce Ù, fix the input method instead of the spelling.
The file is in code page 437 and your editor is using Windows-1252, which puts letters where the box pieces were: └ (192) becomes À, ─ (196) becomes Ä and ┘ becomes Ù. Don't search and replace them. Switch the editor's encoding to code page 437, which some editors list as OEM-US and others as DOS, then save the file as UTF-8.

Frequently Asked Questions

The file is in code page 437 and your editor is using Windows-1252, which puts letters where the box pieces were: └ (192) becomes À, ─ (196) becomes Ä and ┘ becomes Ù. Don't search and replace them. Switch the editor's encoding to code page 437, which some editors list as OEM-US and others as DOS, then save the file as UTF-8.

ASCII 217

Uppercase U with grave accentBox bottom-right corner

ASCII 217 is Ù on Windows and ┘ in old DOS.

Latin Letter

Box Drawing

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 217 is Ù.

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

printf("\u00D9\n"); /* UTF-8: C3 99 */

unsigned char b = 217; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */

printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 217 0xD9 */

return 0;

}

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* Byte 217 is ┘ only on a console using code page 437

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

lone byte 0xD9 is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */

putchar(217);

/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xD9 is -39.

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

char c = (char)217;

unsigned char u = 217;

printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -39 217 */

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

printf("\u2518\n"); /* E2 94 98 */

return 0;

}