Unicode character Pilcrow Sign
About this character
The character ¶ is known as Unicode character Pilcrow Sign and carries the Unicode code point U+00B6, which is 182 in decimal. It belongs to the Latin-1 Supplement block (U+0080–U+00FF), which gathers the accented letters of Western European languages along with the punctuation and symbols inherited from ISO 8859-1.
In memory, ¶ takes 2 bytes in UTF-8 (0xC2 0xB6) and 1 in UTF-16 (0x00B6). That difference is why badly configured forms or databases garble this character: they assume one byte per character.
How to type ¶
| System | What to do |
|---|---|
| Windows | On Windows, hold Alt and type 182 on the numeric keypad. In Word or WordPad, type 00B6 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 “Unicode character Pilcrow Sign”. |
| Linux | On Linux (GTK), type Ctrl + ⇧ + U, 00B6 then press Enter. |
| HTML / Web | In an HTML page, write ¶. Use \00B6 in CSS, \u00B6 in JavaScript and \u00B6 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 ¶
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+00B6 |
| Unicode block | Latin-1 Supplement (U+0080–U+00FF) |
| Decimal | 182 |
| Hexadecimal | 0x00B6 |
| Octal | 0266 |
| Binary | 10110110 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 0xC2 0xB6 |
| UTF-16 units | 0x00B6 |
| Named HTML entity | ¶ |
| Decimal HTML entity | ¶ |
| Hex HTML entity | ¶ |
| CSS escape | \00B6 |
| JavaScript escape | \u00B6 |
| Python escape | \u00B6 |
| URL encoding | %C2%B6 |
Frequently asked questions
What is the Unicode code for ¶?
Its code point is U+00B6, which is 182 in decimal and 0266 in octal. In HTML you can write it as ¶ or ¶.
Why does ¶ show up as a box or a question mark?
An empty box means the font has no glyph for U+00B6. 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 ¶ in a filename, a URL or a password?
In a URL it must be encoded as %C2%B6. Modern filesystems accept it, though it is still risky when moving files between systems. For passwords, some forms reject non-ASCII characters outright.