How to type Not Equal
To type Not Equal (≠), press Alt + 8800 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or press Option + = on Mac, or write ≠ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+2260 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 2260 on Linux, or 2260 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Not Equal To
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+2260
- Windows
- Alt + 8800 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 8800 | Above 255, so Windows will not accept it as typed. Copy the character instead. |
| Mac | Option + = | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ≠ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+2260 | NOT EQUAL TO |
Symbols related to Not Equal
The Unicode code chart points from ≠ to =, and the rest are filed under inequality, not and equal in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other math symbols
Not Equal is not the only name it goes by: people look for ≠ as does not equal too, and the search box on this site matches that as readily as the Unicode name.
≠ lives in the Mathematical Operators block (U+2200-U+22FF), the core set of mathematical and logical operators. Within Unicode it is classified as Sm, a mathematical symbol. Software may lay it out with the spacing an operator expects.
≠ has a decomposed form: it can also be written as U+003D Equals Sign, U+0338 Combining Long Solidus Overlay. The two look identical and are not equal as strings, which is why a search for a word containing ≠ sometimes fails against text that was typed on a different system. Everything on this site uses the single-codepoint (NFC) form shown here.
What Not Equal is used for
In mathematical notation ≠ is a relation: it makes a claim about the two things either side of it, which is true or false rather than a value to work out. TeX gives a relation more space than an operator, and breaks a long line at one in preference to breaking at an operator. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\ne$ 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 inequality and inequation. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Not Equal is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them 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+2261) is identical to, which is three lines and the opposite claim.
What Unicode says about Not Equal
The code chart points from ≠ to Equals Sign and latin letter alveolar click (U+01C2). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Not Equal looks nearly right but not quite.
How Not Equal 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. It is a mirrored character: in right-to-left text it is drawn reversed, so it keeps pointing at what it pointed at.
What people ask about Not Equal
Does not equal alt code?
The Windows Alt code for ≠ is Alt + 8800. Hold Alt and type the digits on the numeric keypad, not the number row, with Num Lock on.
Every way to write Not Equal
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+2260 |
| Decimal | 8800 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 89 A0 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 22 60 |
| HTML entity | ≠ |
| HTML numeric | ≠ or ≠ |
| CSS | \2260 |
| JavaScript | \u2260 |
| Python | \u2260 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%89%A0 |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\ne$ |
| SVG | 2260.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ≠ arrives as â‰
One character has become three, which is what a three-byte UTF-8 sequence looks like when each byte is read separately: E2 89 A0 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+2260, which for a character this far outside Latin-1 is common in older office fonts.