How to type One Half
To type One Half (½), press Alt + 0189 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or write ½ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+00BD directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 00bd on Linux, or 00bd then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Vulgar Fraction One Half
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+00BD
- Windows
- Alt + 0189
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 0189 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| Mac | N/A | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ½ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+00BD | VULGAR FRACTION ONE HALF |
Other fractions symbols
One Half is not the only name it goes by: people look for ½ as 1/2 too, and the search box on this site matches that as readily as the Unicode name.
½ 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 No, a number that is not a digit. Fractions and superscript digits sit here.
What happens to ½ in a search box
½ is a precomposed fraction: Unicode says it can be rewritten as 1⁄2, three separate characters. Anything that normalises text to NFKC before comparing it does exactly that, which is why ½ pasted into a search field, a URL slug or a username can come back as 1⁄2 and match text that never contained ½ at all. NFC, the form this site uses, leaves it alone. Unicode also records its numeric value as 0.5, so software that asks a character what number it is gets 0.5 rather than an error.
What One Half is used for
½ belongs in prose rather than in an equation. LaTeX writes it \textonehalf, after \usepackage{textcomp}, a text command, and there is no maths command for it at all: it is a sign that gets written down, not an operator that acts on anything. Putting it inside $...$ is how it comes out looking wrong.
How One Half behaves in software
½ 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.
Every way to write One Half
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+00BD |
| Decimal | 189 |
| UTF-8 bytes | C2 BD |
| UTF-16 bytes | 00 BD |
| HTML entity | ½ |
| HTML numeric | ½ or ½ |
| CSS | \00BD |
| JavaScript | \u00BD |
| Python | \u00BD |
| URL-encoded | %C2%BD |
| LaTeX, in prose | \textonehalf (needs \usepackage{textcomp}) |
| SVG | 00BD.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ½ arrives as ½
That is this exact character, undamaged: its two UTF-8 bytes C2 BD 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+00BD.