How to type Eighth Note
To type Eighth Note (♪), press Alt + 13 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or write ♪ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+266A directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 266a on Linux, or 266a then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Eighth Note
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+266A
- Windows
- Alt + 13
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 13 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| Mac | N/A | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ♪ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+266A | EIGHTH NOTE |
Symbols related to Eighth Note
These are filed under music in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other symbols
Eighth Note is not the only name it goes by. People look for ♪ as music and musical note as well, and the search box on this site matches any of them, so you do not have to know which name Unicode chose.
♪ lives in the Miscellaneous Symbols block (U+2600-U+26FF), weather, astrology, religion, games and a wide miscellany. Within Unicode it is classified as So, a symbol.
What Eighth Note is used for
In mathematical notation ♪ is an ordinary symbol: it carries no special spacing and sits in an expression the way a letter does, standing for a thing rather than doing something to the things around it. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\eighthnote$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
Unicode publishes a second list of names for ♪ in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and it is music. That word is what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Eighth Note is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches it as well as the Unicode name.
What ♪ gets confused with
♪ has a twin that is a different character underneath. Search, sorting and anything that compares strings can tell them apart even where a reader cannot.
♫ (U+266B) is two beamed eighth notes, which is the one most people picture when they ask for a music note.
What Unicode says about Eighth Note
The standard recognises ♪ under another name as well: quaver. That is a formal alias, not a nickname, which is why it turns up in other people's documentation for the same codepoint.
The code chart points from ♪ to musical symbol eighth note (U+1D160) and musical note (U+1F3B5). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Eighth Note looks nearly right but not quite.
How Eighth Note behaves in software
♪ is East Asian Ambiguous: one column in a Western locale and two in a CJK one. That is why a table that lines up on your machine can break on somebody else's, with no change to the text at all. It carries no direction of its own, so in a line that mixes English with Arabic or Hebrew it takes the direction of the text around it rather than forcing one.
What people ask about Eighth Note
What does mean in music?
♪ is EIGHTH NOTE, encoded at U+266A. It is distinct from musical symbol eighth note (U+1D160) and musical note (U+1F3B5), which the chart lists beside it precisely because they are confused for one another.
How to type music notes?
You can press Alt + 13 on Windows, with Num Lock on and the digits typed on the numeric keypad. That produces ♪.
What is the music symbol called?
Unicode calls ♪ EIGHTH NOTE, at U+266A. It is also searched for as music, music note, musical note.
Every way to write Eighth Note
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+266A |
| Decimal | 9834 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 99 AA |
| UTF-16 bytes | 26 6A |
| HTML entity | ♪ |
| HTML numeric | ♪ or ♪ |
| CSS | \266A |
| JavaScript | \u266A |
| Python | \u266A |
| URL-encoded | %E2%99%AA |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\eighthnote$ |
| SVG | 266A.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ♪ arrives as ♪
One character has become three, which is what a three-byte UTF-8 sequence looks like when each byte is read separately: E2 99 AA read as Windows-1252 gives exactly ♪. The text is intact and the damage is in the reading, so setting the reader to UTF-8 restores it and retyping does not. A rectangle instead of the mojibake means the opposite: the encoding is right and the font has no glyph at U+266A, which for a character this far outside Latin-1 is common in older office fonts.