Is ő the same letter as ö in Hungarian?

No. Hungarian ö is a short vowel and ő, with two slanted strokes, is its long partner, so öt means five while őt means him or her. Windows-1252 only has ö, and ő needs a different code page or Unicode, so store Hungarian text as UTF-8. Swapping ő for ö to make it fit changes the words.

Why is there an ö in Motörhead?

For looks. The heavy metal umlaut is decoration, picked up because it seemed menacing, and it isn't meant to change the pronunciation, so English speakers say Motörhead just like motorhead. When you index band names, fold ö to o so a search for motorhead still finds it.

Why does schön.de show up as xn--schn-7qa.de?

In a domain name ö doesn't travel as ö. Hostnames are limited to ASCII, so schön.de is registered and resolved in its Punycode form, xn--schn-7qa.de, and that's the string you'll find in certificates and DNS records.

Why does Alt+246 type ÷ instead of ö?

Type Alt+0246 for ö and Alt+0214 for Ö. Without the leading zero, Windows reads the number from the DOS table, where 246 is the division sign, and that's the character you got. Every accented letter from 128 up behaves the same way, so the zero is worth making a habit.

What does Gr÷▀e mean in my console output?

It's Größe. A program wrote Windows-1252 text to a console that decodes it with a DOS code page, where the ö byte is ÷ and the ß byte is ▀. For a quick look, run chcp 1252 before the program so the console reads the bytes the way they were written. The lasting fix is making the program emit UTF-8 and running the console in UTF-8 too.

ASCII 246

Lowercase o with umlautDivision sign

ASCII 246 is ö on Windows and ÷ in old DOS.

ö (Small O with Umlaut) is byte 246 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00F6. German writes hören and Möbel with it, Swedish uses ö on its own to mean island, and Turkish, Finnish, Hungarian and Icelandic have it too. It even turns up in English: The New Yorker spells coöperate and coördinate, with the two dots marking the second vowel as a new syllable. Unicode uses the same character for a German umlaut and that diaeresis, so a search for cooperate only finds the New Yorker's spelling if the index folds accents. Old DOS had ö at 148. The UTF-8 bytes C3 B6 misread as Ã¶. The HTML entity is ö.

÷ (Division Sign) is byte 246 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+00F7. Windows-1252 has ö at 246, so the two swap whenever German text crosses between the tables: a ÷ from a DOS file reads as ö in Windows-1252, and Größe printed to a code page 437 console comes out as Gr÷▀e. Code page 850 kept ÷ here.

Latin LetterMath Symbol

Technical Details

Code Example

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#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 246 is ö.
       Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */
    printf("\u00F6\n");   /* UTF-8: C3 B6 */

    unsigned char b = 246;         /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */
    printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b);    /* 246 0xF6 */
    return 0;
}

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* Byte 246 is ÷ only on a console using code page 437
       (chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal the
       lone byte 0xF6 is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */
    putchar(246);

    /* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xF6 is -10.
       Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */
    char c = (char)246;
    unsigned char u = 246;
    printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u);   /* -10 246 */

    /* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */
    printf("\u00F7\n");          /* C3 B7 */
    return 0;
}

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 0246 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. Alt+148, without the zero, types it too. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00F6 and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Option+U, then o.
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type f6, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, quote, o.
Phone: Long-press o and pick ö.

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 246 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. Windows reads it as a DOS code and inserts ÷.

÷ is also ASCII 247 on Windows, which has the full guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

No. Hungarian ö is a short vowel and ő, with two slanted strokes, is its long partner, so öt means five while őt means him or her. Windows-1252 only has ö, and ő needs a different code page or Unicode, so store Hungarian text as UTF-8. Swapping ő for ö to make it fit changes the words.
For looks. The heavy metal umlaut is decoration, picked up because it seemed menacing, and it isn't meant to change the pronunciation, so English speakers say Motörhead just like motorhead. When you index band names, fold ö to o so a search for motorhead still finds it.
In a domain name ö doesn't travel as ö. Hostnames are limited to ASCII, so schön.de is registered and resolved in its Punycode form, xn--schn-7qa.de, and that's the string you'll find in certificates and DNS records.
Type Alt+0246 for ö and Alt+0214 for Ö. Without the leading zero, Windows reads the number from the DOS table, where 246 is the division sign, and that's the character you got. Every accented letter from 128 up behaves the same way, so the zero is worth making a habit.
It's Größe. A program wrote Windows-1252 text to a console that decodes it with a DOS code page, where the ö byte is ÷ and the ß byte is ▀. For a quick look, run chcp 1252 before the program so the console reads the bytes the way they were written. The lasting fix is making the program emit UTF-8 and running the console in UTF-8 too.

Frequently Asked Questions

Type Alt+0246 for ö and Alt+0214 for Ö. Without the leading zero, Windows reads the number from the DOS table, where 246 is the division sign, and that's the character you got. Every accented letter from 128 up behaves the same way, so the zero is worth making a habit.
It's Größe. A program wrote Windows-1252 text to a console that decodes it with a DOS code page, where the ö byte is ÷ and the ß byte is ▀. For a quick look, run chcp 1252 before the program so the console reads the bytes the way they were written. The lasting fix is making the program emit UTF-8 and running the console in UTF-8 too.

ASCII 246

Lowercase o with umlautDivision sign

ASCII 246 is ö on Windows and ÷ in old DOS.

Latin Letter

Math Symbol

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 246 is ö.

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

printf("\u00F6\n"); /* UTF-8: C3 B6 */

unsigned char b = 246; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */

printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 246 0xF6 */

return 0;

}

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* Byte 246 is ÷ only on a console using code page 437

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

lone byte 0xF6 is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */

putchar(246);

/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xF6 is -10.

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

char c = (char)246;

unsigned char u = 246;

printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -10 246 */

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

printf("\u00F7\n"); /* C3 B7 */

return 0;

}