How to type Three Eighths
To type Three Eighths (⅜), press Alt + 8540 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or write ⅜ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+215C directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 215c on Linux, or 215c then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Vulgar Fraction Three Eighths
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+215C
- Windows
- Alt + 8540 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 8540 | Above 255, so Windows will not accept it as typed. Copy the character instead. |
| Mac | N/A | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ⅜ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+215C | VULGAR FRACTION THREE EIGHTHS |
Other fractions symbols
⅜ lives in the Number Forms block (U+2150-U+218F), fractions and Roman numerals as single characters. Within Unicode it is classified as No, a number that is not a digit. Fractions and superscript digits sit here.
What happens to ⅜ in a search box
⅜ is a precomposed fraction: Unicode says it can be rewritten as 3⁄8, three separate characters. Anything that normalises text to NFKC before comparing it does exactly that, which is why ⅜ pasted into a search field, a URL slug or a username can come back as 3⁄8 and match text that never contained ⅜ at all. NFC, the form this site uses, leaves it alone. Unicode also records its numeric value as 0.375, so software that asks a character what number it is gets 0.375 rather than an error.
How Three Eighths behaves in software
⅜ 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 Three Eighths
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+215C |
| Decimal | 8540 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 85 9C |
| UTF-16 bytes | 21 5C |
| HTML entity | ⅜ |
| HTML numeric | ⅜ or ⅜ |
| CSS | \215C |
| JavaScript | \u215C |
| Python | \u215C |
| URL-encoded | %E2%85%9C |
| SVG | 215C.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ⅜ arrives as â…œ
Its three UTF-8 bytes E2 85 9C are being read one at a time as Windows-1252. The text is undamaged; the reader has to be told it is UTF-8.