ASCII 235
Lowercase e with umlautGreek small delta
ASCII 235 is ë on Windows and δ in old DOS.
ë (Small E with Diaeresis) is byte 235 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00EB. Albanian treats it as a letter of its own (është), Dutch and Afrikaans use it to split vowels (ideeën, leë), and English names like Zoë carry it. Names like that raise a question for signup systems: are Zoë and Zoe the same username? Compare byte for byte and both can register, which lets one impersonate the other. Fold accents only for the uniqueness check but not at login, and people can't get in with the name they chose. Pick one normalization and apply it everywhere. Old DOS had ë at 137. The UTF-8 bytes C3 AB misread as ë. The HTML entity is ë.
δ (Small Delta) is byte 235 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+03B4. Maths uses it for small changes and tolerances, as in the epsilon-delta definition of a limit, and for the Kronecker and Dirac deltas. Its lookalike is ∂ (U+2202), the partial derivative sign, which is a different symbol with a different meaning. The capital has a similar trap: the increment sign ∆ (U+2206) looks like Greek Δ (U+0394), and unlike the ohm sign it isn't mapped to the Greek letter by any Unicode normalization. Code page 850 put Ù on this byte. In UTF-8, δ is CE B4, and the HTML entity is δ.
Technical Details
Technical Details
Code Example
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#include <stdio.h>int main(void) {/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 235 is ë.Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */printf("\u00EB\n"); /* UTF-8: C3 AB */unsigned char b = 235; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 235 0xEB */return 0;}
Code Example
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#include <stdio.h>int main(void) {/* Byte 235 is δ only on a console using code page 437(chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal thelone byte 0xEB is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */putchar(235);/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xEB is -21.Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */char c = (char)235;unsigned char u = 235;printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -21 235 *//* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */printf("\u03B4\n"); /* CE B4 */return 0;}
How to Type It
- Windows
- Hold Alt and type 0235 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. Alt+137, without the zero, types it too. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00EB and press Alt+X.
- Mac
- Press Option+U, then e.
- Linux
- In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type eb, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, quote, e.
- Phone
- Long-press e and pick ë.
How to Type It
- Windows
- Hold Alt and type 235 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. US PCs insert δ, but PCs set to code page 850, common in Western Europe, insert Ù. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 03B4 and press Alt+X.
- Mac
- Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for "greek small letter delta".
- Linux
- In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 3b4, then Space.
- Phone
- Add the Greek keyboard in your phone's keyboard settings and type δ there, or tap the character at the top of this page to copy it.
Frequently Asked Questions
The two dots say the vowel starts a new syllable instead of merging with the one before it, so Noël is no-el rather than a single sound. French keeps this as standard spelling, as in Citroën. In English it's optional and mostly gone, and The New Yorker is the best-known holdout, still printing coöperate and reëlect as house style.
Yes, as long as it matches the machine-readable line at the bottom of the passport photo page. Booking systems only take plain letters, and the international passport standard turns Ë into a plain E there, so ZOE is the expected spelling. That differs from ä, ö and ü, which German passports write as AE, OE and UE.