Why does one ê make my SMS cost more?

ê isn't in the GSM 7-bit alphabet that standard text messages use, even though é and è are. One ê in a French message with être or fenêtre switches the whole text to UCS-2, where a segment holds 70 characters instead of 160. Some SMS gateways offer to transliterate it to e and stay in GSM, which is worth turning on if the plainer spelling is acceptable.

What does the circumflex in ê usually mean?

Very often it marks an s that French dropped centuries ago. Forêt was once forest and fête was feste, which is why English kept the s in forest and feast. It doesn't change the sound much anymore: in most of France, ê is pronounced like the open è.

Why does você show up as vocÃª after a database migration?

The dump was loaded through a client connection that wasn't UTF-8, so each ê was stored as two characters. Import it again into a fresh database with the charset named: `mysql --default-character-set=utf8mb4 mydb < dump.sql`, and export with the same option on mysqldump. Fixing the connection setting alone won't touch rows that were already saved wrong.

Why do I get ê when I type ^ and then e?

On French, German and Swiss keyboards ^ is a dead key: it waits for the next letter and puts the accent on it. For a plain caret, press ^ and then Space. If you write code all day and the dead key keeps getting in the way, Linux offers layout variants without dead keys, such as German (no dead keys).

Why does my old parts list show 10 kê instead of 10 kΩ?

A DOS-era program wrote Ω as a single byte, and that byte means ê in Windows-1252. When only some lines are affected, fix them in place, since ê almost never follows a digit in real text: `re.sub(r'(\d\s?[kKmM]?)ê', r'\1Ω', s)` in Python turns 10 kê into 10 kΩ and 470ê into 470Ω.

ASCII 234

Q: Why do I get ê when I type ^ and then e?

On French, German and Swiss keyboards ^ is a dead key: it waits for the next letter and puts the accent on it. For a plain caret, press ^ and then Space. If you write code all day and the dead key keeps getting in the way, Linux offers layout variants without dead keys, such as German (no dead keys).

Q: Why does my old parts list show 10 kê instead of 10 kΩ?

A DOS-era program wrote Ω as a single byte, and that byte means ê in Windows-1252. When only some lines are affected, fix them in place, since ê almost never follows a digit in real text: `re.sub(r'(\d\s?[kKmM]?)ê', r'\1Ω', s)` in Python turns 10 kê into 10 kΩ and 470ê into 470Ω.

Lowercase e with circumflexGreek capital omega

ASCII 234 is ê on Windows and Ω in old DOS.

ê (Small E with Circumflex) is byte 234 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00EA. French uses it in tête and fenêtre, and Portuguese in mês and português. Portuguese has a regional split worth knowing if you index text from both sides of the Atlantic. Brazil writes gênero and tênis with a circumflex, while Portugal writes género and ténis with an acute, so the same word can arrive with ê or é depending on who typed it. Treat the two as equivalent when matching Portuguese text. Old DOS had ê at 136. The UTF-8 bytes C3 AA misread as Ãª. The HTML entity is ê.

Ω (Capital Omega) is byte 234 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+03A9. Electronics uses it for ohms, as in a 10 kΩ resistor, and complexity analysis for lower bounds, as in Ω(n). Unicode also has a separate Ohm sign, Ω (U+2126), that looks identical. Unlike the micro sign, this pair is canonically equivalent: plain NFC normalization already turns U+2126 into U+03A9, while µ only changes under NFKC. Normalize input with NFC and ohm values will match however they were typed. Code page 850 put Û on this byte. In UTF-8, Ω is CE A9, and the HTML entity is Ω.

Latin LetterGreek Letter

Technical Details

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 234 is ê.
       Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */
    printf("\u00EA\n");   /* UTF-8: C3 AA */

    unsigned char b = 234;         /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */
    printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b);    /* 234 0xEA */
    return 0;
}

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* Byte 234 is Ω only on a console using code page 437
       (chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal the
       lone byte 0xEA is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */
    putchar(234);

    /* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xEA is -22.
       Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */
    char c = (char)234;
    unsigned char u = 234;
    printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u);   /* -22 234 */

    /* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */
    printf("\u03A9\n");          /* CE A9 */
    return 0;
}

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 0234 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. Alt+136, without the zero, types it too. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00EA and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Option+I, then e.
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type ea, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, caret, e.
Phone: Long-press e and pick ê.

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 234 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. US PCs insert Ω, but PCs set to code page 850, common in Western Europe, insert Û. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 03A9 and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Option+Z.
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 3a9, then Space.
Phone: Add the Greek keyboard in your phone's keyboard settings and type Ω there, or tap the character at the top of this page to copy it.

Frequently Asked Questions

ê isn't in the GSM 7-bit alphabet that standard text messages use, even though é and è are. One ê in a French message with être or fenêtre switches the whole text to UCS-2, where a segment holds 70 characters instead of 160. Some SMS gateways offer to transliterate it to e and stay in GSM, which is worth turning on if the plainer spelling is acceptable.
Very often it marks an s that French dropped centuries ago. Forêt was once forest and fête was feste, which is why English kept the s in forest and feast. It doesn't change the sound much anymore: in most of France, ê is pronounced like the open è.
The dump was loaded through a client connection that wasn't UTF-8, so each ê was stored as two characters. Import it again into a fresh database with the charset named: `mysql --default-character-set=utf8mb4 mydb < dump.sql`, and export with the same option on mysqldump. Fixing the connection setting alone won't touch rows that were already saved wrong.
On French, German and Swiss keyboards ^ is a dead key: it waits for the next letter and puts the accent on it. For a plain caret, press ^ and then Space. If you write code all day and the dead key keeps getting in the way, Linux offers layout variants without dead keys, such as German (no dead keys).
A DOS-era program wrote Ω as a single byte, and that byte means ê in Windows-1252. When only some lines are affected, fix them in place, since ê almost never follows a digit in real text: `re.sub(r'(\d\s?[kKmM]?)ê', r'\1Ω', s)` in Python turns 10 kê into 10 kΩ and 470ê into 470Ω.

Frequently Asked Questions

A DOS-era program wrote Ω as a single byte, and that byte means ê in Windows-1252. When only some lines are affected, fix them in place, since ê almost never follows a digit in real text: `re.sub(r'(\d\s?[kKmM]?)ê', r'\1Ω', s)` in Python turns 10 kê into 10 kΩ and 470ê into 470Ω.

ASCII 234

Lowercase e with circumflexGreek capital omega

ASCII 234 is ê on Windows and Ω in old DOS.

Latin Letter

Greek Letter

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 234 is ê.

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

printf("\u00EA\n"); /* UTF-8: C3 AA */

unsigned char b = 234; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */

printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 234 0xEA */

return 0;

}

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* Byte 234 is Ω only on a console using code page 437

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

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

putchar(234);

/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xEA is -22.

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

char c = (char)234;

unsigned char u = 234;

printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -22 234 */

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

printf("\u03A9\n"); /* CE A9 */

return 0;

}