Latin character I with macron
About this character
The character ī is known as Latin character I with macron and carries the Unicode code point U+012B, which is 299 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, ī takes 2 bytes in UTF-8 (0xC4 0xAB) and 1 in UTF-16 (0x012B). That difference is why badly configured forms or databases garble this character: they assume one byte per character.
How to type ī
| System | What to do |
|---|---|
| Windows | In Word or WordPad, type 012B 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 I with macron”. |
| Linux | On Linux (GTK), type Ctrl + ⇧ + U, 012B then press Enter. |
| HTML / Web | In an HTML page, write ī. Use \012B in CSS, \u012B in JavaScript and \u012B 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 ī
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+012B |
| Unicode block | Latin Extended-A (U+0100–U+017F) |
| Decimal | 299 |
| Hexadecimal | 0x012B |
| Octal | 0453 |
| Binary | 100101011 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 0xC4 0xAB |
| UTF-16 units | 0x012B |
| Named HTML entity | None |
| Decimal HTML entity | ī |
| Hex HTML entity | ī |
| CSS escape | \012B |
| JavaScript escape | \u012B |
| Python escape | \u012B |
| URL encoding | %C4%AB |
Frequently asked questions
What is the Unicode code for ī?
Its code point is U+012B, which is 299 in decimal and 0453 in octal. In HTML you can write it as ī or ī.
Why does ī show up as a box or a question mark?
An empty box means the font has no glyph for U+012B. 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 ī in a filename, a URL or a password?
In a URL it must be encoded as %C4%AB. Modern filesystems accept it, though it is still risky when moving files between systems. For passwords, some forms reject non-ASCII characters outright.