How to type Not Sign
To type Not Sign (¬), press Alt + 0172 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or press Option + L on Mac, or write ¬ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+00AC directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 00ac on Linux, or 00ac then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Not Sign
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+00AC
- Windows
- Alt + 0172
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 0172 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| Mac | Option + L | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ¬ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+00AC | NOT SIGN |
Symbols related to Not Sign
These are filed under not in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other math symbols
¬ lives in the Latin-1 Supplement block (U+0080-U+00FF), the accented letters and common signs Western European languages needed. Within Unicode it is classified as Sm, a mathematical symbol. Software may lay it out with the spacing an operator expects.
How to type ¬ on a Mac and in Microsoft Word
On a Mac, press Option + L. Character Viewer, on Control + Command + Space, finds it under Not Sign if the shortcut is taken by something else.
In Microsoft Word, type 00ac 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 ¬ back into 00ac, which is the quickest way to check what a character really is.
What Not 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: $\neg$ 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 negation. That word is what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Not Sign is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches it as well as the Unicode name.
What Unicode says about Not Sign
The standard recognises ¬ under another name as well: angled dash (in typography). 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 reversed not sign (U+2310) and turned not sign (U+2319). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Not Sign looks nearly right but not quite.
How Not Sign behaves in software
¬ takes one column in a terminal. 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 Not Sign
How to type negation symbol on keyboard?
You can press Alt + 0172 on Windows, with Num Lock on and the digits typed on the numeric keypad, or press Option + L on Mac. Either produces ¬.
Every way to write Not Sign
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+00AC |
| Decimal | 172 |
| UTF-8 bytes | C2 AC |
| UTF-16 bytes | 00 AC |
| HTML entity | ¬ |
| HTML numeric | ¬ or ¬ |
| CSS | \00AC |
| JavaScript | \u00AC |
| Python | \u00AC |
| URL-encoded | %C2%AC |
| LaTeX, in prose | \textlnot (needs \usepackage{textcomp}) |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\neg$ |
| SVG | 00AC.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ¬ arrives as ¬
That is this exact character, undamaged: its two UTF-8 bytes C2 AC 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+00AC.