How to type Mu (Micro)
To type Mu (Micro) (μ), press Alt + 230 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or press Option + M on Mac, or write μ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+03BC directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 03bc on Linux, or 03bc then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Greek Small Letter Mu
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+03BC
- Windows
- Alt + 230
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 230 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| Mac | Option + M | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | μ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+03BC | GREEK SMALL LETTER MU |
Other greek symbols
μ 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 Μ (U+039C). They are separate codepoints, so a byte comparison treats them as different characters even though a case-insensitive search does not.
How to type μ in Microsoft Word and in Google Docs
In Microsoft Word, type 03bc and press Alt + X. Word reads the four characters before the cursor as a hex codepoint and replaces them, and pressing Alt + X again turns μ back into 03bc, which is the quickest way to check what a character really is.
In Google Docs, Insert, then Special characters, then search for greek small letter mu or paste 03bc into the codepoint box.
On Windows, hold Alt and type 230 on the numeric keypad.
On a phone, neither iOS nor Android has a codepoint route. Copy μ from this page once, then add it as a text replacement (Settings, General, Keyboard on iOS) so a short abbreviation expands to it from then on.
What Mu (Micro) is used for
In mathematical notation μ 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: $\mupmu$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
The command is \mupmu rather than the \mu 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 μ into an equation gets you the upright one.
μ is a letter before it is a symbol, and on the Greek keyboard layout it is simply M: the key your keycap already calls M. 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.
What μ gets confused with
μ 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.
μ (U+03BC) is Greek small letter mu, a different codepoint with the same shape. Unicode's own advice is mu for the Greek letter and the micro sign for the unit prefix, and normalising to NFKC turns the micro sign into mu, which is how a value pasted out of a spreadsheet changes codepoint without changing appearance.
What Unicode says about Mu (Micro)
The code chart points from μ to micro sign (U+00B5). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Mu (Micro) looks nearly right but not quite.
How Mu (Micro) behaves in software
μ 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.
What people ask about Mu (Micro)
How to write micro symbol in word?
In Word, type 03bc and press Alt+X, which converts the codepoint you just typed into μ. Insert › Symbol › More Symbols finds it by its Unicode name, GREEK SMALL LETTER MU. Google Docs has no Alt+X, so use Alt + 230 there, or Insert › Special characters and search the same name.
How to type micro symbol on windows?
You can press Alt + 230 on Windows, with Num Lock on and the digits typed on the numeric keypad, or press Option + M on Mac. Either produces μ.
Every way to write Mu (Micro)
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+03BC |
| Decimal | 956 |
| UTF-8 bytes | CE BC |
| UTF-16 bytes | 03 BC |
| HTML entity | μ |
| HTML numeric | μ or μ |
| CSS | \03BC |
| JavaScript | \u03BC |
| Python | \u03BC |
| URL-encoded | %CE%BC |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\mupmu$ |
| SVG | 03BC.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If μ arrives as μ
That is this exact character, undamaged: its two UTF-8 bytes CE BC 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+03BC.