How to type Superscript Two
To type Superscript Two (²), press Alt + 0178 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or write ² in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+00B2 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 00b2 on Linux, or 00b2 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Superscript Two
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+00B2
- Windows
- Alt + 0178
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 0178 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| Mac | N/A | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ² | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+00B2 | SUPERSCRIPT TWO |
Symbols related to Superscript Two
The Unicode code chart points from ² to ¹, and the rest are filed under superscript in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other math symbols
Superscript Two is not the only name it goes by. People look for ² as squared and power of 2 as well, and the search box on this site matches any of them, so you do not have to know which name Unicode chose.
² 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. Its bidirectional class makes it a European number.
What happens to ² in a search box
² is a superscript form: Unicode says it can be rewritten as 2, one character. Anything that normalises text to NFKC before comparing it does exactly that, which is why ² pasted into a search field, a URL slug or a username can come back as 2 and match text that never contained ² at all. NFC, the form this site uses, leaves it alone. Unicode also records its numeric value as 2, so software that asks a character what number it is gets 2 rather than an error.
What Superscript Two is used for
Unicode publishes a second list of names for ² in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and it is squared. That word is what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Superscript Two 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 Superscript Two
The standard recognises ² under another name as well: squared. That is a formal alias, not a nickname, which is why it turns up in other people's documentation for the same codepoint.
Unicode annotates ² directly. Against U+00B2 the code chart carries the note “Other superscript digit characters: 2070-2079”. That is the standard saying what the character is for, rather than an inference from its name.
The code chart points from ² to Superscript One. These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Superscript Two looks nearly right but not quite.
How Superscript Two behaves in software
² 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.
What people ask about Superscript Two
How to type power of 2 on keyboard?
You can press Alt + 0178 on Windows, with Num Lock on and the digits typed on the numeric keypad. That produces ².
Every way to write Superscript Two
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+00B2 |
| Decimal | 178 |
| UTF-8 bytes | C2 B2 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 00 B2 |
| HTML entity | ² |
| HTML numeric | ² or ² |
| CSS | \00B2 |
| JavaScript | \u00B2 |
| Python | \u00B2 |
| URL-encoded | %C2%B2 |
| SVG | 00B2.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ² arrives as ²
That is this exact character, undamaged: its two UTF-8 bytes C2 B2 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+00B2.