How to type Xi
To type Xi (ξ), press Alt + 958 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or write ξ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+03BE directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 03be on Linux, or 03be then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Greek Small Letter Xi
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+03BE
- Windows
- Alt + 958 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 958 | Above 255, so Windows will not accept it as typed. Copy the character instead. |
| Mac | N/A | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ξ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+03BE | GREEK SMALL LETTER XI |
Other greek symbols
ξ lives in the Greek and Coptic block (U+0370-U+03FF), the Greek alphabet, used throughout mathematics and the sciences. Within Unicode it is classified as Ll, a lowercase letter. It has an uppercase counterpart and changes under case conversion. Its bidirectional class makes it left-to-right.
Its uppercase counterpart is Ξ (U+039E). They are separate codepoints, so a byte comparison treats them as different characters even though a case-insensitive search does not.
What Xi is used for
In mathematical notation ξ is a variable: it stands for a quantity rather than acting on one, so an equation treats it the way it treats x, and the spacing around it is the spacing around a letter. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\mupxi$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
The command is \mupxi rather than the \xi most people reach for, and the difference is not cosmetic: mup is unicode-math for maths, upright, and this codepoint is the upright letter. Plain LaTeX's short command gives the sloped math-italic letter, which is a different character with a different codepoint. Copying ξ into an equation gets you the upright one.
ξ is a letter before it is a symbol, and on the Greek keyboard layout it is simply J: the key your keycap already calls J. That is the route when you are typing Greek rather than reaching for one character. How to type Greek on a keyboard has the whole map.
How Xi behaves in software
ξ 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 is a left-to-right character, so it holds that direction even inside a right-to-left paragraph.
Every way to write Xi
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+03BE |
| Decimal | 958 |
| UTF-8 bytes | CE BE |
| UTF-16 bytes | 03 BE |
| HTML entity | ξ |
| HTML numeric | ξ or ξ |
| CSS | \03BE |
| JavaScript | \u03BE |
| Python | \u03BE |
| URL-encoded | %CE%BE |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\mupxi$ |
| SVG | 03BE.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ξ arrives as ξ
That is this exact character, undamaged: its two UTF-8 bytes CE BE 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+03BE.