Help:Special characters - MediaWiki
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When you edit this page, you agree to release your contribution under the
CC0
. See
Public Domain Help Pages
for more info.
MediaWiki uses
Unicode
UTF-8
) for
character encoding
This allows for a wide range of characters, including
CJK
characters
, to be included directly in wikitext.
The characters are encoded using a variable number of bytes per character.
Notable special characters
edit
Accented letters and umlauts
À Á Â Ã Ä Å
Æ Ç È É Ê Ë
Ì Í Î Ï Ñ Ò
Ó Ô Œ Õ Ö Ø Ù
Ú Û Ü ß à á
â ã ä å æ ç
è é ê ë ì í
î ï ñ ò ó ô
œ õ ö ø ù ú
û ü ÿ
Punctuation marks
¿ ¡ « » § ¶
† ‡ • - – —
Business symbols
™ © ® ¢ € ¥ £ ¤
Greek alphabets
α β γ δ ε ζ
η θ ι κ λ μ ν
ξ ο π ρ σ ς
τ υ φ χ ψ ω
Γ Δ Θ Λ Ξ Π
Σ Φ Ψ Ω
Mathematical symbols
∫ ∑ ∏ √ − ± ∞
≈ ∝ ≡ ≠ ≤ ≥
× · ÷ ∂ ′ ″
∇ ‰ ° ∴ ø
∈ ∩ ∪ ⊂ ⊃ ⊆ ⊇
¬ ∧ ∨ ∃ ∀ ⇒ ⇔
→ ↔ ↑ ℵ ∉
Subscript and superscript characters
x₀ x₁ x₂ x₃ x₄
x₅ x₆ x₇ x₈ x₉
x⁰ x¹ x² x³ x⁴
x⁵ x⁶ x⁷ x⁸ x⁹
Typing special characters
edit
Use a
Special characters
button above the edit box. This requires the wiki to have the
CharInsert
extension installed. The available characters depend on the wiki and user preferences; the lists can be collapsible or menu-selected.
Copy the character from a webpage or a local page. It shouldn't be an image or part of an image, such as those generated by the
TeX feature
of the wiki.
Use a special keyboard or a special browser function. The
UniversalLanguageSelector
extension provides various built-in special keyboards.
Use an
HTML named character entity reference
like
à
or an HTML numeric character reference like
¡
, then copy the character from the preview. The code itself used to be stored in the wikitext. This might still be present on some pages and can affect the internal search function. Some characters like "→" can't be found by the search function unless coded as
→
. See
Help:Searching
Linking text with special characters
edit
Many users have a setting that displays underlined links.
This setting is available in the
Appearance
Advanced options
section on the
Preferences
page.
For example, when adding a link to characters like +, −, <, >, ⊂, ⊃, with underlined links enabled (thus rendering as
+, −, <, >, ⊂, ⊃
), they may look like different symbols such as ±, =, ≤, ≥, ⊆, ⊇.
Suppose you want to link the mathematical symbols for "subset" and "superset" in a MediaWiki article.
If you simply link the symbols ⊂ and ⊃, they might be confusing or mistaken for other symbols due to their visual similarity.
Here's how you can use clear links to represent subset and superset.
Wikitext
Rendering
A [[Subset|⊂]] B
A [[Superset|⊃]] B
This links ⊂ and ⊃ to the "Subset" and "Superset" articles respectively, making it clear that ⊂ represents a subset or superset.
If you want to combine symbols and text to make it clearer, you can use:
A [[Subset|⊂]] B (where ⊂ indicates a subset).
This provides context for the symbol ⊂ by explicitly mentioning that it indicates a subset.
There's less risk of confusion when linking phrases or multiple characters.
For example:
[[x|''x'' > 3]]
is the target page, and
> 3
is the text that will appear as the link.
The use of
''
around
indicates emphasis (italicization), making it stand out.
This visual distinction helps users recognize that it's a specific term or variable, not just a random character.
Alt keycodes
edit
See also:
w:Alt codes
Certain special characters with decimal
codepoints
below 256 can be typed using the keyboard by pressing
Alt + Decimal
code numbers.
For example, to type the character
(small e with acute accent, HTML entity code
é
), press Alt + 130, then release Alt.
However, some special characters like
(small lambda) cannot be typed using their decimal codes (955 or 0955) with the Alt key in applications like Notepad or Internet Explorer, resulting in incorrect characters like "╗" or "»".
Wordpad, on the other hand, supports decimal codepoints above 256, allowing you to enter and copy special/unicode characters.
Alternatively, you can use hex codepoints followed by
Alt
in Wordpad or Word (not in IE or Notepad).
For instance, type
3BB
(the hex code for
) and press
Alt
to convert
3BB
into
Pressing
Alt
again will revert
to 3BB.
This allows you to copy and paste the character wherever needed, or use its HTML codes
λ
or
λ
Mathematical notation
edit
You can use
HTML
<
sup
and
<
sub
tags
to generate superscript and subsript characters without directly typing them in wikitext:
xk
-> x
xk
-> x
Some characters can be directly entered using HTML entities:
→
-> →, etc.
More complex equations can be entered using
<
math
syntax:
->
->
Egyptian hieroglyphs
edit
To display Egyptian hieroglyphs, use the
<
hiero
tag.
For example:
{{#tag:hiero|a-p:t-q}}
->
See
Extension:WikiHiero/Syntax
for more details.
External resources for Unicode characters
edit
Unicode character charts
: Hexadecimal charts in PDF format, displaying all characters independent of your browser's capabilities.
Unicode support help
: Guides for enabling Unicode on various platforms.
HTML 4.0 Character Entity References
: Demonstrates named and decimal character references in your browser.
FileFormat.Info
: In-depth details on many Unicode characters, showing named, decimal, and hexadecimal references, and their appearance in your browser.
Alan Wood's Unicode Resources
: Extensive resource with character test pages for all Unicode ranges, including OS-specific support and links to fonts and utilities.
See also
edit
Extension:Math/Syntax
Help:URL
w:Help:Special characters
Unicode input methods
Windows Alt keycodes
chart and
Alt
+X keycodes chart.
Special characters
hotkeys.js
- Simplify special character input with custom Ctrl-key shortcuts
Notes
edit
CJK – Chinese Japanese Korean characters
Retrieved from "
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