How to type Euro Sign
To type Euro Sign (€), press Alt + 0128 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or press Option + Shift + 2 on Mac, or write € in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+20AC directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 20ac on Linux, or 20ac then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Euro Sign
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+20AC
- Windows
- Alt + 0128
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 0128 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| Mac | Option + Shift + 2 | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | € | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+20AC | EURO SIGN |
Symbols related to Euro Sign
These are filed under currency in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other currency symbols
€ lives in the Currency Symbols block (U+20A0-U+20CF), currency signs added after Latin-1, including the euro. Within Unicode it is classified as Sc, a currency symbol. Formatting libraries recognise it when rendering money. Its bidirectional class makes it a European number terminator, so it sits beside a number without breaking its direction.
What Euro Sign 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: $\euro$ 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 they are currency and eur. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Euro Sign is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them as well as the Unicode name.
What Unicode says about Euro Sign
Unicode annotates € directly. Against U+20AC the code chart carries the note “Currency sign for the European Monetary Union”. It adds: euro, not ecu. That is the standard saying what the character is for, rather than an inference from its name.
The code chart points from € to euro-currency sign (U+20A0). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Euro Sign looks nearly right but not quite.
How Euro Sign 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 Euro Sign
What is the sign of euro money?
€ is EURO SIGN, encoded at U+20AC. The Unicode code chart annotates it “Currency sign for the European Monetary Union”, which is the standard's own statement of what it is for. It is distinct from euro-currency sign (U+20A0), which the chart lists beside it precisely because they are confused for one another.
Every way to write Euro Sign
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+20AC |
| Decimal | 8364 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 82 AC |
| UTF-16 bytes | 20 AC |
| HTML entity | € |
| HTML numeric | € or € |
| CSS | \20AC |
| JavaScript | \u20AC |
| Python | \u20AC |
| URL-encoded | %E2%82%AC |
| LaTeX, in prose | \texteuro (needs \usepackage{textcomp}) |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\euro$ |
| SVG | 20AC.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 82 AC 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+20AC, which for a character this far outside Latin-1 is common in older office fonts.