Latin character L with stroke
About this character
The character ł is known as Latin character L with stroke and carries the Unicode code point U+0142, which is 322 in decimal. It belongs to the Latin Extended-A block (U+0100–U+017F), which gathers the accented letters of Central and Northern European languages missing from Latin-1, such as Polish, Czech and Hungarian.
In memory, ł takes 2 bytes in UTF-8 (0xC5 0x82) and 1 in UTF-16 (0x0142). That difference is why badly configured forms or databases garble this character: they assume one byte per character.
How to type ł
| System | What to do |
|---|---|
| Windows | In Word or WordPad, type 0142 and press Alt + X to turn the code into the character. |
| macOS | On a Mac, open the Character Viewer with Ctrl + ⌘ + Space and search for “Latin character L with stroke”. |
| Linux | On Linux (GTK), type Ctrl + ⇧ + U, 0142 then press Enter. |
| HTML / Web | In an HTML page, write ł. Use \0142 in CSS, \u0142 in JavaScript and \u0142 in Python. |
| On this site | The simplest route is the Copy button above: the character goes straight to your clipboard, ready to paste anywhere. |
Keyboards that include ł
This character is not on any common physical layout, so the Copy button above is the quickest way to get it into a document.
Codes and encodings
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Code point | U+0142 |
| Unicode block | Latin Extended-A (U+0100–U+017F) |
| Decimal | 322 |
| Hexadecimal | 0x0142 |
| Octal | 0502 |
| Binary | 101000010 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 0xC5 0x82 |
| UTF-16 units | 0x0142 |
| Named HTML entity | None |
| Decimal HTML entity | ł |
| Hex HTML entity | ł |
| CSS escape | \0142 |
| JavaScript escape | \u0142 |
| Python escape | \u0142 |
| URL encoding | %C5%82 |
Frequently asked questions
What is the Unicode code for ł?
Its code point is U+0142, which is 322 in decimal and 0502 in octal. In HTML you can write it as ł or ł.
Why does ł show up as a box or a question mark?
An empty box means the font has no glyph for U+0142. The character is still in the text: switching to a font that covers the block (Noto, DejaVu or Segoe UI Symbol) makes it appear.
Can I use ł in a filename, a URL or a password?
In a URL it must be encoded as %C5%82. Modern filesystems accept it, though it is still risky when moving files between systems. For passwords, some forms reject non-ASCII characters outright.