Is más the same word as mas in Spanish?

No. Más means more, while mas is an old-fashioned word for but, so quiero más and quiero mas say different things. Spanish uses the written accent to separate pairs like this all the time: está is the verb form (it is), and esta means this. Dropping the accent turns one word into the other.

Why does PowerShell show Ã¡ instead of á from my file?

Windows PowerShell 5.1 reads files without a byte order mark in the system's ANSI code page, usually Windows-1252, so the two UTF-8 bytes of á show up as Ã and ¡. Pass the encoding: `Get-Content notes.txt -Encoding UTF8`. PowerShell 7 assumes UTF-8 by default, so upgrading fixes it too.

Was it á or ¡ that broke into Ã¡ or Â¡?

Spanish mojibake is confusing to read because two different characters break into almost the same pair. á is C3 A1 in UTF-8 and turns into Ã¡, while the inverted exclamation mark ¡ is C2 A1 and turns into Â¡. So in estÃ¡ and Â¡Hola! the first character tells you which one it was: Ã means á, Â means ¡.

Why does Alt+225 type ß when I want á?

Add a zero: Alt+0225 gives á, and Alt+0193 gives the capital Á. Without the zero, Windows reads the number from the DOS code page, where 225 belongs to the German sharp s. That makes Alt+225 a handy way to get ß, just not á.

Why does dir > files.txt turn Straße into Straáe?

cmd writes redirected output in the console's DOS code page, 850 on German Windows, where ß and the Windows á share a byte, and your editor reads the file as Windows-1252. Run `cmd /u /c dir > files.txt` to get UTF-16 output any editor reads correctly. The /u switch only covers cmd's own commands like dir and echo, not separate programs.

ASCII 225

Lowercase a with acute accentSharp s (Eszett)

ASCII 225 is á on Windows and ß in old DOS.

á (Small A with Acute) is byte 225 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00E1. Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Czech and Slovak all use it, and Vietnamese uses it for the rising tone. ZIP archives are one place to find it broken. The ZIP format's historical default for file names is code page 437, with a flag that marks names as UTF-8. When an archive stores UTF-8 names without setting that flag, or the extracting tool ignores it, más.txt comes out as m├ís.txt. Re-extract with a tool that lets you choose the file name encoding. Old DOS had á at 160. In UTF-8 it's C3 A1, and the HTML entity is á.

ß (Sharp S) is byte 225 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+00DF. It sits in the middle of the Greek row, between α at 224 and Γ at 226, and in practice the same glyph served for both German ß and Greek β. Unicode mappings pick ß, so math text from DOS that used this byte as beta comes out as ß after conversion, and β = 0.5 turns into ß = 0.5. Those need fixing by hand or with a context-aware replace. Windows-1252 has á at 225, so German DOS text read as Windows-1252 turns Straße into Straáe. Code page 850 kept ß here.

Latin LetterLatin Letter

Technical Details

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 225 is á.
       Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */
    printf("\u00E1\n");   /* UTF-8: C3 A1 */

    unsigned char b = 225;         /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */
    printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b);    /* 225 0xE1 */
    return 0;
}

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* Byte 225 is ß only on a console using code page 437
       (chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal the
       lone byte 0xE1 is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */
    putchar(225);

    /* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xE1 is -31.
       Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */
    char c = (char)225;
    unsigned char u = 225;
    printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u);   /* -31 225 */

    /* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */
    printf("\u00DF\n");          /* C3 9F */
    return 0;
}

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 0225 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. Alt+160, without the zero, types it too. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00E1 and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Option+E, then a.
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type e1, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, apostrophe, a.
Phone: Long-press a and pick á.

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 225 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. Windows reads it as a DOS code and inserts ß.

ß is also ASCII 223 on Windows, which has the full guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

No. Más means more, while mas is an old-fashioned word for but, so quiero más and quiero mas say different things. Spanish uses the written accent to separate pairs like this all the time: está is the verb form (it is), and esta means this. Dropping the accent turns one word into the other.
Windows PowerShell 5.1 reads files without a byte order mark in the system's ANSI code page, usually Windows-1252, so the two UTF-8 bytes of á show up as Ã and ¡. Pass the encoding: `Get-Content notes.txt -Encoding UTF8`. PowerShell 7 assumes UTF-8 by default, so upgrading fixes it too.
Spanish mojibake is confusing to read because two different characters break into almost the same pair. á is C3 A1 in UTF-8 and turns into Ã¡, while the inverted exclamation mark ¡ is C2 A1 and turns into Â¡. So in estÃ¡ and Â¡Hola! the first character tells you which one it was: Ã means á, Â means ¡.
Add a zero: Alt+0225 gives á, and Alt+0193 gives the capital Á. Without the zero, Windows reads the number from the DOS code page, where 225 belongs to the German sharp s. That makes Alt+225 a handy way to get ß, just not á.
cmd writes redirected output in the console's DOS code page, 850 on German Windows, where ß and the Windows á share a byte, and your editor reads the file as Windows-1252. Run `cmd /u /c dir > files.txt` to get UTF-16 output any editor reads correctly. The /u switch only covers cmd's own commands like dir and echo, not separate programs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Add a zero: Alt+0225 gives á, and Alt+0193 gives the capital Á. Without the zero, Windows reads the number from the DOS code page, where 225 belongs to the German sharp s. That makes Alt+225 a handy way to get ß, just not á.
cmd writes redirected output in the console's DOS code page, 850 on German Windows, where ß and the Windows á share a byte, and your editor reads the file as Windows-1252. Run `cmd /u /c dir > files.txt` to get UTF-16 output any editor reads correctly. The /u switch only covers cmd's own commands like dir and echo, not separate programs.

ASCII 225

Lowercase a with acute accentSharp s (Eszett)

ASCII 225 is á on Windows and ß in old DOS.

Latin Letter

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 225 is á.

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

printf("\u00E1\n"); /* UTF-8: C3 A1 */

unsigned char b = 225; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */

printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 225 0xE1 */

return 0;

}

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* Byte 225 is ß only on a console using code page 437

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

lone byte 0xE1 is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */

putchar(225);

/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xE1 is -31.

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

char c = (char)225;

unsigned char u = 225;

printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -31 225 */

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

printf("\u00DF\n"); /* C3 9F */

return 0;

}