Is avô grandfather or grandmother?

Grandfather. The circumflex marks a closed o, avô, while grandmother is avó, with an acute accent and an open o. The plural avós covers grandparents as a pair. In writing, the accent is the only thing telling the two apart, so don't drop it in names or forms.

Why is it notre but le nôtre?

They're different words. Notre, without the accent, stands in front of a noun (notre maison) and has a short o. Le nôtre is the pronoun that replaces the noun (c'est le nôtre), and its long closed o gets the circumflex. Votre and le vôtre follow the same pattern.

Is it pôr or por in Portuguese?

Both, for different words. Pôr with the circumflex is the verb to put, and por is the preposition meaning by or for. The 1990 spelling agreement removed most accents that only told words apart, but pôr kept its circumflex, so vou pôr isso aqui still needs it.

Why does hôtel print as h├┤tel in my console?

A UTF-8 C++ program printing it in a code page 437 console shows h├┤tel, because ô is C3 B4 in UTF-8 and the console draws C3 as ├ and B4 as ┤. Calling SetConsoleOutputCP(CP_UTF8) at startup, or saving the source in the console's code page, lines the two up.

Why does Alt+244 give ⌠ instead of ô?

Type Alt+0244 for ô, and Alt+0212 for the capital Ô. Without the leading zero, Windows looks the number up in the DOS table instead, and on a US system that slot holds the top half of an integral sign.

ASCII 244

Lowercase o with circumflexIntegral top half

ASCII 244 is ô on Windows and ⌠ in old DOS.

ô (Small O with Circumflex) is byte 244 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00F4. French writes it in hôpital, côte and drôle, and Portuguese in avô and pôr. In French the circumflex can separate words (côte is a coast, cote a rating), which makes browser search worth knowing about. Firefox's find bar ignores accents unless you tick Match Diacritics, so searching cote highlights côte and côté as well. Tick the option when the distinction matters. Old DOS had ô at 147. The UTF-8 bytes C3 B4 misread as Ã´. The HTML entity is ô.

⌠ (Top Half Integral) is byte 244 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+2320. It's the upper half of a tall integral sign: put it directly above ⌡ (245) on the next line and a DOS screen showed one integral two rows high. Unicode keeps the pieces for compatibility and adds ⎮ (U+23AE) to extend the stem further. For real maths on the web, use the single ∫ (U+222B) or proper markup like MathML, because the halves only meet when the font and line spacing cooperate. There's no named HTML entity, so use ⌠. Code page 850 put ¶ on this byte. In UTF-8 it's E2 8C A0.

Latin LetterMath Symbol

Technical Details

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 244 is ô.
       Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */
    printf("\u00F4\n");   /* UTF-8: C3 B4 */

    unsigned char b = 244;         /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */
    printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b);    /* 244 0xF4 */
    return 0;
}

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* Byte 244 is ⌠ only on a console using code page 437
       (chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal the
       lone byte 0xF4 is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */
    putchar(244);

    /* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xF4 is -12.
       Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */
    char c = (char)244;
    unsigned char u = 244;
    printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u);   /* -12 244 */

    /* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */
    printf("\u2320\n");          /* E2 8C A0 */
    return 0;
}

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 0244 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. Alt+147, without the zero, types it too. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00F4 and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Option+I, then o.
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type f4, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, caret, o.
Phone: Long-press o and pick ô.

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 244 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 2320 and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for "top half integral".
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 2320, 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

Grandfather. The circumflex marks a closed o, avô, while grandmother is avó, with an acute accent and an open o. The plural avós covers grandparents as a pair. In writing, the accent is the only thing telling the two apart, so don't drop it in names or forms.
They're different words. Notre, without the accent, stands in front of a noun (notre maison) and has a short o. Le nôtre is the pronoun that replaces the noun (c'est le nôtre), and its long closed o gets the circumflex. Votre and le vôtre follow the same pattern.
Both, for different words. Pôr with the circumflex is the verb to put, and por is the preposition meaning by or for. The 1990 spelling agreement removed most accents that only told words apart, but pôr kept its circumflex, so vou pôr isso aqui still needs it.
A UTF-8 C++ program printing it in a code page 437 console shows h├┤tel, because ô is C3 B4 in UTF-8 and the console draws C3 as ├ and B4 as ┤. Calling SetConsoleOutputCP(CP_UTF8) at startup, or saving the source in the console's code page, lines the two up.
Type Alt+0244 for ô, and Alt+0212 for the capital Ô. Without the leading zero, Windows looks the number up in the DOS table instead, and on a US system that slot holds the top half of an integral sign.

Frequently Asked Questions

Type Alt+0244 for ô, and Alt+0212 for the capital Ô. Without the leading zero, Windows looks the number up in the DOS table instead, and on a US system that slot holds the top half of an integral sign.

ASCII 244

Lowercase o with circumflexIntegral top half

ASCII 244 is ô on Windows and ⌠ in old DOS.

Latin Letter

Math Symbol

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 244 is ô.

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

printf("\u00F4\n"); /* UTF-8: C3 B4 */

unsigned char b = 244; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */

printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 244 0xF4 */

return 0;

}

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* Byte 244 is ⌠ only on a console using code page 437

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

lone byte 0xF4 is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */

putchar(244);

/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xF4 is -12.

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

char c = (char)244;

unsigned char u = 244;

printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -12 244 */

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

printf("\u2320\n"); /* E2 8C A0 */

return 0;

}