ASCII 250
Lowercase u with acute accentMiddle dot
ASCII 250 is ú on Windows and · in old DOS.
ú (Small U with Acute) is byte 250 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00FA. Spanish writes tú with it, Portuguese saúde, and Irish, Icelandic, Hungarian and Czech use it for a long u. Programmers sometimes get one they never asked for. On the US-International keyboard layout the apostrophe is a dead key, so typing 'use strict' can produce úse strict', and the parser reports an unterminated string. Press space after the apostrophe, or switch to the plain US layout for writing code. Old DOS had ú at 163. The UTF-8 bytes C3 BA misread as ú. The HTML entity is ú.
· (Middle Dot) is byte 250 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+00B7. Windows-1252 has ú at 250, so a · in DOS text reads as ú in Windows-1252, and Spanish text printed to a code page 437 console turns música into m·sica. Code page 850 kept · at 250.
Technical Details
Technical Details
Code Example
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#include <stdio.h>int main(void) {/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 250 is ú.Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */printf("\u00FA\n"); /* UTF-8: C3 BA */unsigned char b = 250; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 250 0xFA */return 0;}
Code Example
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#include <stdio.h>int main(void) {/* Byte 250 is · only on a console using code page 437(chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal thelone byte 0xFA is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */putchar(250);/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xFA is -6.Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */char c = (char)250;unsigned char u = 250;printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -6 250 *//* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */printf("\u00B7\n"); /* C2 B7 */return 0;}
How to Type It
- Windows
- Hold Alt and type 0250 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. Alt+163, without the zero, types it too. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00FA and press Alt+X.
- Mac
- Press Option+E, then u.
- Linux
- In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type fa, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, apostrophe, u.
- Phone
- Long-press u and pick ú.
How to Type It
- Windows
- Hold Alt and type 250 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. Windows reads it as a DOS code and inserts ·.
· is also ASCII 183 on Windows, which has the full guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
When it means you, as in tú tienes razón. Without the accent, tu is the possessive your, as in tu casa. The accent is the only thing telling the two apart in writing, so leaving it off turns the subject of a sentence into a possessive.
They're the same long u sound, split by position. Czech writes ú at the start of a word, as in úkol, and ů inside or at the end, as in dům. ů isn't in Windows-1252, so Czech text needs Windows-1250 or UTF-8, and swapping ů for ú to make it fit produces misspellings.
Aún with the accent means still or yet, as in aún no ha llegado (he still hasn't arrived). Aun without it means even, as in aun así (even so). A quick test: if you can swap in todavía, write aún. If incluso fits instead, write aun.
Type Alt+0250 for ú, and Alt+0218 for the capital Ú. The short code without a zero comes from the DOS table, where 250 is the middle dot, so that's what appears. It's worth remembering anyway if you ever need that dot for Catalan.
Frequently Asked Questions
Type Alt+0250 for ú, and Alt+0218 for the capital Ú. The short code without a zero comes from the DOS table, where 250 is the middle dot, so that's what appears. It's worth remembering anyway if you ever need that dot for Catalan.