View source for Help:Special characters

{{short description|Character references}}
{{Wikipedia how-to|H:SC}}
Many characters not on the standard computer keyboard will be useful&mdash;even necessary&mdash;for many pages, and for editions of Wikipedia in other languages. This page contains recommendations for which characters are safe to use and how to enter them.

==Editing==
See [[Help:Entering special characters]].

== Viewing ==
Most current browsers have some level of Unicode support, but some do it better than others. The most commonly encountered problem is that browsers running on Windows XP rely on preconfigured font links in the registry rather than actually searching for a font that can display the character in question. This means that the browser often had to be forced to use particular fonts. On the English Wikipedia, there are a set of templates to do this. For example, {{tl|IPA}} for the [[w:International Phonetic Alphabet|International Phonetic Alphabet]]. The stuff in [[w:Windows Glyph List 4|Windows Glyph List 4]] should be safe to use without such special measures.

=== Windows 7 ===
Unicode support is extended through installing the optional standalone Windows Update package KB2729094,<ref>{{cite web|title=An update for the Segoe UI symbol font in Windows 7 and in Windows Server 2008 R2 is available (KB2729094)|url=http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2729094|website=Windows Knowledge Base|publisher=[[Microsoft Corporation]]|accessdate=29 October 2014}}</ref> available for both '''[http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30521 32-bit]''' and '''[http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30566 64-bit]''' versions of [[Windows 7 SP1]] from the Microsoft Download Center. This [[backport]] from Windows 8 updates the [[Segoe#Segoe_UI|Segoe UI]] font by adding browser support for [[Emoji]] and other symbols to Windows 7. More Emoji characters can be installed by copying the Segoe UI Emoji font file, seguiemj.ttf, from another computer running Windows 8 or later, into the Windows 7 computer. Newer Windows versions provide more emoji characters than older versions.

=== Displaying special characters ===
To display Unicode or special characters on web page(s), one or more of the [[List of typefaces#Unicode fonts|Unicode fonts]] need to be present or installed in your computer, first. For proper working functionality, ''setup'' or ''configuration'' or ''settings'' from the web page viewing browser software also needs to be modified.

Special symbols should display properly without further configuration with [[Konqueror]], [[Opera (Internet suite)|Opera]], [[Safari (web browser)|Safari]], and most other recent browsers. An optional step that can be taken for better (and correct) display of characters with [[Ligature (typography)|ligature]] forms, [[Combining character|combined characters]], after the previously mentioned steps were followed, is to install a [[Unicode#Multilingual text-rendering engines|rendering engine]] software.

For displaying individual special characters, HTML decimal or [[hexadecimal]] numeric entity codes can be used in the place of the ''char''. If a paragraph with lots of special Unicode characters needs to be displayed, then, <code>&lt;p class="Unicode"></code> ... <code>&lt;/p&gt;</code>, or, <code>&lt;span class="Unicode"&gt;</code> ... <code>&lt;/span&gt;</code> can also be used.

The <code>class="Unicode"</code> is to be used in web page(s), HTML or wiki tags, where various characters from wide range of various Unicode blocks need to be displayed. If the special characters that need to be displayed on web page(s) are mostly covering fewer Unicode blocks, related to [[Unicode Latin|Latin scripts]], then <code>class="latinx"</code> can be used. For special characters or symbols related to [[International Phonetic Alphabet]], <code>class="IPA"</code> can be used. For [[Polytonic orthography|polytonic (Greek)]] characters or related symbols, <code>class="polytonic"</code> can be used.

=== Choosing a font ===
Some freely available fonts that include many [[Unicode blocks]] are [[TITUS Cyberbit Basic]] and [[GNU Unifont]]. The [[Unicode font]] article provides a more general overview through [[Unicode_font#List_of_Unicode_fonts|this table]]. If you already know what specific blocks are needed, [[Unicode_font#Comparison_of_fonts|this section]] may be more useful. Most articles on specific scripts include information on the corresponding Unicode block.

{{A note}} Many websites (including Wikimedia sites) default to serif or sans-serif fonts depending upon the page element (e.g. headings may default to serif, and body text to sans serif) so it may be necessary to use [[Help:CSS|custom CSS styling]] if you wish to override this and force a certain font.

=== Changing Google Chrome's default font ===
[[Google Chrome]] allows the user to set default fonts for normal, serif, sans-serif and monospace display modes. Any font that is currently installed on the system may be used. To access this setting, click the three-dot options icon on the top right of the browser window and select '''Settings'''. Scroll to the '''Appearance''' section, and click '''Customize fonts'''. Here, you can select any fonts on your system to use as defaults.

=== Changing Mozilla Firefox's default font ===
In [[Mozilla Firefox]], to change the font, you need to open the '''Settings''' window though the '''Tools''' menu or the menu button. In the '''General''' panel, scroll to '''Fonts and Colors''' and choose an appropriate font. Usually, any font installed on your system should be available. You may also click '''Advanced''' to disable custom fonts and choose different fonts for proportional, serif, sans-serif and monospace, but this doesn't seem to be always required.

=== Changing Internet Explorer's (IE) default font ===
The default font for Latin scripts in older versions of the [[Internet Explorer]] (IE) web browser for Windows is [[Times New Roman]]. Older editions of the font don't include many [[Unicode block]]s. To choose a different font, follow this path from the IE menu bar ''':''' &nbsp;{{nowrap|Tools &gt; Internet Options &gt; (General tab &gt;) Fonts &gt; Webpage Font:}}<br>
to a scrolling list of fonts and select a different one, such as [[Lucida Sans Unicode]], and then select '''OK'''.

==Fonts for specific writing systems==

=== Ancient scripts ===
e.g. [[Phoenician alphabet]], [[Old Italic alphabet]], [[Linear B]], etc.

;Windows users
Please download and install one of these freely licensed fonts
*[https://dn-works.com/ufas/ Aegean]
*[http://www.fonts2u.com/akkadian.font Akkadian/Cuneiform]
*[http://scholarsfonts.net/cardofnt.html Cardo]
*[http://www.wazu.jp/downloads/damase_v.2.zip MPH 2B Damase]
*[http://www.fonts2u.com/code2000.font Code2000]
*[http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/code2001.html Code2001]
*[http://junicode.sourceforge.net/ Junicode]

;Linux users
If using a [[Debian]]-based Linux (e.g. Ubuntu, Linux Mint), these should be already installed by default. If not, please download and install [[deb (file format)|deb package]] <code>ttf-ancient-fonts</code> by entering in [[Linux console|terminal]]:
:<code>sudo apt-get install ttf-ancient-fonts</code> 
:Note that you need to have administrative privileges to use this command.
=== Egyptian hieroglyphic text ===
* ''Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs'' (Open Font License) is available from [https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+Egyptian+Hieroglyphs here].

=== Glagolitic text ===
* ''MPH 2B'' from [http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Glagolitic.html here].
* ''Menaion Unicode'' from [http://ponomar.net/cu_support/fonts.html here].

=== Shavian text ===

* ''Copyleft'' is available from [http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/unicode-font.html here].

== IPA symbols ==
Most [[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA symbols]] are not included in the most widely used form of [[Times Roman|Times New Roman]] (though they are included in the version provided with [[Windows Vista]]), the default font for Latin scripts in [[Internet Explorer]] for [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]]. To properly view IPA symbols in that browser, you must set it to use a [[List of typefaces|font]] which includes the IPA extensions characters. Such fonts include [[Lucida Sans Unicode]], which comes with [[Windows XP]]; [[Gentium]], [[Charis SIL]], [[Doulos SIL]], [[DejaVu fonts|DejaVu Sans]], or [[Bitstream Cyberbit|TITUS Cyberbit]], which are [[free software Unicode typefaces|freely available]]; or [[Arial Unicode MS]], which comes with [[Microsoft Office]].
On this page, we have forced Internet Explorer to use such a font by default, so it should appear correctly, but this has not yet been done to all the other pages containing IPA. This also applies to other pages using [[meta:Help:Special characters|special symbols]]. Bear this in mind if you see error symbols such as "຦"<!-- The symbol used here, which is a valid but currently unassigned Unicode character U+0EA6, is here to demonstrate what the reader will see if they encounter a valid character which is missing in their fonts. Browsers like Firefox usually display these as a box, sometimes with the character code written inside; they do not display them as the replacement character. Thus, please, do not replace this character with U+FFFD REPLACEMENT CHARACTER "�". Please do not change it to a Noncharacter such as U+FDD0 either: Noncharacters are for applications to use internally, and as such are "forbidden for use in open interchange of Unicode text data", and may get replaced by U+FFFD (see section 16.7 of Unicode, version 5.2) --> in articles. This also happens with former Spanish N with a small N above (Nᷠ nᷠ), Yañalif N with descender (Ꞑ ꞑ), and Volapük second umlaut variants of A, O and U (Ꞛ ꞛ, Ꞝ ꞝ, and Ꞟ ꞟ).
[[Google Chrome]] and other [[Chromium_(web_browser)|Chromium]]-based browsers on Windows have an issue in the font-fallback system, when the font lists for each script is hard coded. Chromium assumes these fonts should always be available, thus only search these fonts, mostly OS-specific through their system fonts, and cannot be user-configured other than changing the default fonts for standard, serif, sans-serif, and fixed-width styles, thus reducing flexibility. Thus some unrecognizable newer characters can't be fixed just by installing suitable external fonts, requiring users to update their operating system to those that contains the missing characters in one of the system fonts.<ref>{{cite web|title=chromium/font_fallback_win.cc at master - chromium/chromium|url=https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/master/third_party/blink/renderer/platform/fonts/win/font_fallback_win.cc#L99|website=GitHub|accessdate=20 August 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=How do web browsers implement font fallback?|url=https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29241764/how-do-web-browsers-implement-font-fallback|website=StackOverflow|accessdate=20 August 2022}}</ref> 
Special symbols should display properly without further configuration with [[Mozilla Firefox]], [[Konqueror]], [[Opera (web browser)|Opera]], [[Safari (web browser)|Safari]] and most other recent browsers.

== What character encoding does Wikipedia use? ==
From MediaWiki 1.5, all projects use '''[[w:Unicode|Unicode]] ([[w:UTF-8|UTF-8]])''' [[w:character encoding|character encoding]].
Until the end of June 2005, when this new version came into use on Wikimedia projects, the English, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish Wikipedias used [[w:Windows-1252|Windows-1252]] (they declared themselves to be [[w:ISO-8859-1|ISO-8859-1]] but in reality browsers treat the two as synonymous and the MediaWiki software made no attempt to prevent use of characters exclusive to windows-1252). Pre-upgrade wikitext in their databases remains stored in Windows-1252 and is converted on load (some of it may also have been converted by gradual changes in the way history is stored). Edits made since the upgrade will be stored as UTF-8 in the database. This conversion on load process is invisible to users. It is also invisible to reusers as Wikimedia now uses [[m:Data dumps/FAQ#What happened to the SQL dumps?|XML dumps rather than database dumps]].
;Unicode (UTF-8)
:*a variable number of bytes per character
:*special characters, including [[w:CJK|CJK]] characters, can be treated like normal ones; not only the webpage, but also the edit box shows the character; in addition it is possible to use the multi-character codes; they are not automatically converted in the edit box.
;ISO 8859-1
:*one byte per character
:*special characters that are not available in the limited character set are stored in the form of a multi-character code; there are usually two or three equivalent representations, e.g. for the character € the '''named character reference''' <code>&amp;euro;</code> and the '''decimal character reference''' <code>&amp;#8364;</code> and the '''hexadecimal character reference''' <code>&amp;#x20AC;</code>. The edit box shows the entered code, the webpage the resulting character. Unavailable characters which are copied into the edit box are first displayed as the character, and [[Help:Automatic conversion of wikitext|automatically converted]] to their decimal codes on Preview or Publish changes.
:*the most common special characters, such as é, are in the character set, so code like <code>&amp;eacute;</code>, although allowed, is not needed.
Note that Special:Export exports using UTF-8 even if the database is encoded in ISO 8859-1, at least that was the case for the English Wikipedia, already when it used version 1.4.
To find out which character set applies in a project, use the browser's "View Source" feature and look for something like this:
:<code><meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"/></code>
or
:<code><meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/></code>

==See also==
*[[Unicode font]]
*[[Unicode input]]
*[[Wikipedia:Mathematical symbols]]
*[[Help:Wiki markup]]
*[[Help:Displaying a formula]]
*[[Help:Turkish characters]]
*[[Template:Contains special characters/templates]]
*[[List of XML and HTML character entity references]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.unicode.org/charts/ Unicode Character Code Charts]—Hexadecimal numbers only; PDF files showing all characters independent of browser capabilities
*http://www.unicode.org/help/display_problems.html Help for enabling Unicode support on most platforms 
*[http://unicode.coeurlumiere.com/ Table of Unicode characters from 1 to 65535]—shows how the decimal character references look in one's browser
*[http://www.alanwood.net/demos/ent4_frame.html HTML 4.0 Character Entity References]—shows how the named and decimal character references look in one's browser
*[https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/block/index.htm FileFormat.Info]—details of many Unicode characters, including the named, decimal and hexadecimal character reference, showing how it should look and for each, how it looks in one's browser
*[http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/index.html Alan Wood's Unicode resources]—comprehensive resource with character test pages for all Unicode ranges, as well as OS-specific Unicode support information and links to fonts and utilities
*[https://www.branah.com/unicode-converter Unicode Converter - Decimal, text, URL, and unicode converter]—conversion between copy-pasteable characters, Unicode notation, html, percent encodings and other formats, helpful when trying to enter or interpret characters
*[http://rishida.net/tools/conversion/ Unicode Code Converter]—conversion between copy-pasteable characters, Unicode notation, html, percent encodings and other formats, helpful when trying to enter or interpret characters
*[http://shapecatcher.com Shapecatcher]—online tool to find Unicode characters by drawing them

{{Help navigation}}
{{Wikipedia technical help|collapsed}}
[[Category:Wikipedia text help]]
[[Category:Wikipedia special characters]]