ASCII 221
Uppercase Y with acute accentLeft half block
ASCII 221 is Ý on Windows and ▌ in old DOS.
Ý (Capital Y with Acute) is byte 221 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00DD. Icelandic and Faroese use it, and it appears in Czech and Slovak text set in capitals, as in BÝT. The page view you're more likely to have come from looks like Ýstanbul or ÝZMÝR. That's Turkish text in Windows-1254 read as Windows-1252: code page 1254 puts the dotted capital İ on byte 221, and the same mix-up turns Ş into Þ one byte later. Reopen the text as Windows-1254. UTF-8 stores Ý as C3 9D, and 9D is unassigned in Windows-1252. The HTML entity is Ý.
▌ (Left Half Block) is byte 221 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+258C. It fills the left half of a cell, which lets a horizontal bar grow in half steps: ███▌ is three and a half units. Modern progress bars go finer. Python's tqdm builds its bar from the left eighth blocks ▏▎▍▌▋▊▉█ (U+258F down to U+2588), and of those, code page 437 has only ▌ and █, which is why tqdm offers ascii=True for places that can't show the rest. There's no named HTML entity, so use ▌. Code page 850 put ¦ on this byte. In UTF-8 it's E2 96 8C.
Technical Details
Technical Details
Code Example
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#include <stdio.h>int main(void) {/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 221 is Ý.Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */printf("\u00DD\n"); /* UTF-8: C3 9D */unsigned char b = 221; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 221 0xDD */return 0;}
Code Example
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#include <stdio.h>int main(void) {/* Byte 221 is ▌ only on a console using code page 437(chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal thelone byte 0xDD is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */putchar(221);/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xDD is -35.Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */char c = (char)221;unsigned char u = 221;printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -35 221 *//* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */printf("\u258C\n"); /* E2 96 8C */return 0;}
How to Type It
- Windows
- Hold Alt and type 0221 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00DD and press Alt+X.
- Mac
- Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for "latin capital letter y with acute".
- Linux
- In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type dd, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, apostrophe, Y.
- Phone
- Tap the character at the top of this page to copy it.
How to Type It
- Windows
- Hold Alt and type 221 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. US PCs insert ▌, but PCs set to code page 850, common in Western Europe, insert ¦. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 258C and press Alt+X.
- Mac
- Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for "left half block".
- Linux
- In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 258c, 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
Map the six letters Windows-1252 got wrong back to Turkish ones, because reopening can't help once the misread text has been saved. Ð goes to Ğ, Ý to İ, Þ to Ş, and lowercase ð, ý, þ to ğ, ı, ş. In Python, `s.translate(str.maketrans('ÐÝÞðýþ', 'ĞİŞğış'))` does it in one pass, provided the text contains no genuine Icelandic.
Yes. The acute marks a long vowel and often tells two words apart: být means to be, while byt means an apartment, so BÝT and BYT on a sign say different things. Czech alphabetical order still files ý together with y, though, so the accent matters for meaning but not for sorting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Run chcp 437 before starting the program and the raw byte draws ▌ again. The lasting fix is printing the Unicode character U+258C instead of byte 221, since consoles on Western European Windows start in code page 850 and a UTF-8 terminal won't read the single byte at all. The right half ▐ at 222 has the same problem and shows up as Ì.