How to type Kappa
To type Kappa (κ), press Alt + 954 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or write κ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+03BA directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 03ba on Linux, or 03ba then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Greek Small Letter Kappa
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+03BA
- Windows
- Alt + 954 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 954 | Above 255, so Windows will not accept it as typed. Copy the character instead. |
| Mac | N/A | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | κ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+03BA | GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA |
Other greek symbols
κ lives in the Greek and Coptic block (U+0370-U+03FF), the Greek alphabet, used throughout mathematics and the sciences. Within Unicode it is classified as Ll, a lowercase letter. It has an uppercase counterpart and changes under case conversion. Its bidirectional class makes it left-to-right.
Its uppercase counterpart is Κ (U+039A). They are separate codepoints, so a byte comparison treats them as different characters even though a case-insensitive search does not.
What Kappa is used for
In mathematical notation κ is a variable: it stands for a quantity rather than acting on one, so an equation treats it the way it treats x, and the spacing around it is the spacing around a letter. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\mupkappa$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
The command is \mupkappa rather than the \kappa most people reach for, and the difference is not cosmetic: mup is unicode-math for maths, upright, and this codepoint is the upright letter. Plain LaTeX's short command gives the sloped math-italic letter, which is a different character with a different codepoint. Copying κ into an equation gets you the upright one.
κ is a letter before it is a symbol, and on the Greek keyboard layout it is simply K: the key your keycap already calls K. That is the route when you are typing Greek rather than reaching for one character. How to type Greek on a keyboard has the whole map.
How Kappa behaves in software
κ 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 is a left-to-right character, so it holds that direction even inside a right-to-left paragraph.
Every way to write Kappa
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+03BA |
| Decimal | 954 |
| UTF-8 bytes | CE BA |
| UTF-16 bytes | 03 BA |
| HTML entity | κ |
| HTML numeric | κ or κ |
| CSS | \03BA |
| JavaScript | \u03BA |
| Python | \u03BA |
| URL-encoded | %CE%BA |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\mupkappa$ |
| SVG | 03BA.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If κ arrives as κ
That is this exact character, undamaged: its two UTF-8 bytes CE BA are being read one at a time as Windows-1252. The Latin-1 range is where this happens most, because it is the range every legacy system thought it already handled. Nothing is lost, and retyping will not help: the fix is at the reading end, which has to be told the text is UTF-8. An empty rectangle is the opposite complaint, and means the encoding is right and the font has no glyph for U+03BA.