Latin character S with acute accent
About this character
The character ś is known as Latin character S with acute accent and carries the Unicode code point U+015B, which is 347 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, ś takes 2 bytes in UTF-8 (0xC5 0x9B) and 1 in UTF-16 (0x015B). That difference is why badly configured forms or databases garble this character: they assume one byte per character.
How to type ś
| System | What to do |
|---|---|
| Windows | In Word or WordPad, type 015B 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 S with acute accent”. |
| Linux | On Linux (GTK), type Ctrl + ⇧ + U, 015B then press Enter. |
| HTML / Web | In an HTML page, write ś. Use \015B in CSS, \u015B in JavaScript and \u015B 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 ś
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+015B |
| Unicode block | Latin Extended-A (U+0100–U+017F) |
| Decimal | 347 |
| Hexadecimal | 0x015B |
| Octal | 0533 |
| Binary | 101011011 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 0xC5 0x9B |
| UTF-16 units | 0x015B |
| Named HTML entity | None |
| Decimal HTML entity | ś |
| Hex HTML entity | ś |
| CSS escape | \015B |
| JavaScript escape | \u015B |
| Python escape | \u015B |
| URL encoding | %C5%9B |
Frequently asked questions
What is the Unicode code for ś?
Its code point is U+015B, which is 347 in decimal and 0533 in octal. In HTML you can write it as ś or ś.
Why does ś show up as a box or a question mark?
An empty box means the font has no glyph for U+015B. 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 ś in a filename, a URL or a password?
In a URL it must be encoded as %C5%9B. Modern filesystems accept it, though it is still risky when moving files between systems. For passwords, some forms reject non-ASCII characters outright.