How to type Subscript One
To type Subscript One (₁), press Alt + 8321 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or write ₁ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+2081 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 2081 on Linux, or 2081 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Subscript One
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+2081
- Windows
- Alt + 8321 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 8321 | Above 255, so Windows will not accept it as typed. Copy the character instead. |
| Mac | N/A | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ₁ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+2081 | SUBSCRIPT ONE |
Other math symbols
₁ lives in the Superscripts and Subscripts block (U+2070-U+209F), raised and lowered digits and letters. Within Unicode it is classified as No, a number that is not a digit. Fractions and superscript digits sit here. Its bidirectional class makes it a European number.
What happens to ₁ in a search box
₁ is a subscript form: Unicode says it can be rewritten as 1, one character. Anything that normalises text to NFKC before comparing it does exactly that, which is why ₁ pasted into a search field, a URL slug or a username can come back as 1 and match text that never contained ₁ at all. NFC, the form this site uses, leaves it alone. Unicode also records its numeric value as 1, so software that asks a character what number it is gets 1 rather than an error.
How Subscript One behaves in software
₁ 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.
Every way to write Subscript One
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+2081 |
| Decimal | 8321 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 82 81 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 20 81 |
| HTML entity | ₁ |
| HTML numeric | ₁ or ₁ |
| CSS | \2081 |
| JavaScript | \u2081 |
| Python | \u2081 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%82%81 |
| SVG | 2081.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ₁ arrives as â‚�
Its three UTF-8 bytes E2 82 81 are being read one at a time as Windows-1252. The text is undamaged; the reader has to be told it is UTF-8.