How to type Yen Sign
To type Yen Sign (¥), press Alt + 0165 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or press Option + Y on Mac, or write ¥ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+00A5 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 00a5 on Linux, or 00a5 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Yen Sign
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+00A5
- Windows
- Alt + 0165
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 0165 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| Mac | Option + Y | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ¥ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+00A5 | YEN SIGN |
Symbols related to Yen Sign
These are filed under currency in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other currency symbols
¥ 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 Sc, a currency symbol. Formatting libraries recognise it when rendering money. Its bidirectional class makes it a European number terminator, so it sits beside a number without breaking its direction.
What Yen Sign is used for
In mathematical notation ¥ is an ordinary symbol: it carries no special spacing and sits in an expression the way a letter does, standing for a thing rather than doing something to the things around it. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\mathyen$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
Unicode publishes a second list of names for ¥ in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and they are cny, currency, jpy and yuan. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Yen Sign is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them as well as the Unicode name.
What Unicode says about Yen Sign
The standard recognises ¥ under another name as well: yuan sign (renminbi). 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 ¥ directly. Against U+00A5 the code chart carries the note “Glyph may have one or two crossbars, but the official symbol in Japan and China has two”. It adds: in native context, specific ideographs may be used for units of these currencies. That is the standard saying what the character is for, rather than an inference from its name.
The code chart points from ¥ to latin capital letter y with stroke (U+024E), cyrillic capital letter straight u with stroke (U+04B0), U+5143 (U+5143) and U+5186 (U+5186). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Yen Sign looks nearly right but not quite.
How Yen Sign behaves in software
¥ takes one column in a terminal. 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.
What people ask about Yen Sign
How to type a yen symbol?
You can press Alt + 0165 on Windows, with Num Lock on and the digits typed on the numeric keypad, or press Option + Y on Mac. Either produces ¥.
Every way to write Yen Sign
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+00A5 |
| Decimal | 165 |
| UTF-8 bytes | C2 A5 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 00 A5 |
| HTML entity | ¥ |
| HTML numeric | ¥ or ¥ |
| CSS | \00A5 |
| JavaScript | \u00A5 |
| Python | \u00A5 |
| URL-encoded | %C2%A5 |
| LaTeX, in prose | \textyen (needs \usepackage{textcomp}) |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\mathyen$ |
| SVG | 00A5.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ¥ arrives as Â¥
That is this exact character, undamaged: its two UTF-8 bytes C2 A5 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+00A5.