From Linux Man Pages
groff_char - groff character names
DESCRIPTION
This manual page lists the standard groff input characters. The output characters in this document will look
different depending on which output device was chosen (with option -T for the man(1) program or the roff format-
ter). Only the characters that are available for the device that is being used to print or view this manual page
will be displayed (the device currently used is `latin1').
In the actual version, groff provides only 8-bit characters for direct input and named characters for further
glyphs. On ASCII platforms, character codes in the range 0 to 127 (decimal) represent the usual 7-bit ASCII
characters, while codes between 127 and 255 are interpreted as the corresponding characters in the Latin-1
(ISO-8859-1) code set. On EBCDIC platforms, only the code page cp1047 is supported (which contains the same
characters as Latin-1). It is rather straightforward (for the experienced user) to set up other 8bit encodings
like Latin-2; since groff will use Unicode in the next major version, no additional encodings are provided.
All roff systems provide the concept of named characters. In traditional roff systems, only names of length 2
were used, while groff also provides support for longer names. It is strongly suggested that only named charac-
ters are used for all characters outside of the 7-bit ASCII range.
Some of the predefined groff escape sequences (with names of length 1) also produce single characters; these
exist for historical reasons or are printable versions of syntactical characters. They include \\, \', \`, \-,
\., and \e; see groff(7).
In groff, all of these different types of characters can be tested positively with the .if c conditional.
REFERENCE
In this section, the characters in groff are specified in tabular form. The meaning of the columns is as fol-
lows.
Output shows how the character is printed for the current device; although this can have quite a different shape
on other devices, it always represents the same glyph.
Input name
specifies how the character is input either directly by a key on the keyboard, or by a groff escape
sequence.
Input code
applies to characters which can be input with a single character, and gives the ISO Latin-1 decimal code
of that input character. Note that this code is equivalent to the lowest 256 Unicode characters; (includ-
ing 7-bit ASCII in the range 0 to 127).
PostScript name
gives the usual PostScript name of the output character.
ASCII Characters
These are the basic characters having 7-bit ASCII code values. These are identical to the first 127 characters
of the character standards ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) and Unicode (range C0 Controls and Basic Latin). To save space,
not every code has an entry in the following because the following code ranges are well known.
0-32 Control characters (print as themselves).
48-57 Decimal digits 0 to 9 (print as themselves).
65-90 Upper case letters A-Z (print as themselves).
97-122 Lower case letters a-z (print as themselves).
127 Control character (prints as itself).
The remaining ranges constitute the printable, non-alphanumeric ASCII characters; only these are listed below.
As can be seen in the table below, most of these characters print as themselves; the only exceptions are the
following characters:
` the ISO Latin-1 `Grave Accent' (code 96) prints as `, a left single quotation mark,
'' the ISO Latin-1 `Apostrophe' (code 39) prints as ', a right single quotation mark; the corresponding ISO
Latin-1 characters can be obtained with \` and \(aq.
- the ISO Latin-1 `Hyphen, Minus Sign' (code 45) prints as a hyphen; a minus sign can be obtained with \-.
~ the ISO Latin-1 `Tilde' (code 126); a larger glyph can be obtained with \(ti.
^ the ISO Latin-1 `Circumflex Accent' (code 94); a larger glyph can be obtained with \(ha.
Output Input Input PostScript Notes
name code name
! ! 33 exclam
" " 34 quotedbl
# # 35 numbersign
$ $ 36 dollar
% % 37 percent
& & 38 ampersand
' ' 39 quoteright
( ( 40 parenleft
) ) 41 parenright
* * 42 asterisk
+ + 43 plus
, , 44 comma
- - 45 hyphen
. . 46 period
/ / 47 slash
: : 58 colon
; ; 59 semicolon
< < 60 less
= = 61 equal
> > 62 greater
? ? 63 question
@ @ 64 at
[ [ 91 bracketleft
\ \ 92 backslash
] ] 93 bracketright
^ ^ 94 circumflex circumflex accent
_ _ 95 underscore
` ` 96 quoteleft
{ { 123 braceleft
| | 124 bar
} } 125 braceright
~ ~ 126 tilde tilde accent
Latin-1 Special Characters
These characters have character codes between 128 and 255. They are interpreted as characters according to the
Latin-1 (iso-8859-1) code set, being identical to the Unicode range C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement.
128-159
the C1 Controls; they print as themselves, but the effect is mostly undefined.
160 the ISO Latin-1 no-break space is mapped to `\' '', the escaped space character.
173 the soft hyphen control character (prints as itself). groff never use this character for output (thus it
is omitted in the table below); the input character 173 is mapped onto \%.
The remaining ranges (161-172, 174-255), called the Latin-1 Supplement in Unicode, are printable characters that
print as themselves. Although they can be specified directly with the keyboard on systems with a Latin-1 code
page, it is better to use their named character equivalent; see next section.
Output Input Input PostScript Notes
name code name
� � 161 exclamdown inverted exclamation mark
� � 162 cent
� � 163 sterling
� � 164 currency
� � 165 yen
� � 166 brokenbar
� � 167 section
� � 168 dieresis
� � 169 copyright
� � 170 ordfeminine
� � 171 guillemotleft
� � 172 logicalnot
� � 174 registered
� � 175 macron
� � 176 degree
� � 177 plusminus
� � 178 twosuperior
� � 179 threesuperior
� � 180 acute acute accent
� � 181 mu micro sign
� � 182 paragraph
� � 183 periodcentered
� � 184 cedilla
� � 185 onesuperior
� � 186 ordmasculine
� � 187 guillemotright
� � 188 onequarter
� � 189 onehalf
� � 190 threequarters
� � 191 questiondown
� � 192 Agrave
� � 193 Aacute
� � 194 Acircumflex
� � 195 Atilde
� � 196 Adieresis
� � 197 Aring
� � 198 AE
� � 199 Ccedilla
� � 200 Egrave
� � 201 Eacute
� � 202 Ecircumflex
� � 203 Edieresis
� � 204 Igrave
� � 205 Iacute
� � 206 Icircumflex
� � 207 Idieresis
� � 208 Eth
� � 209 Ntilde
� � 210 Ograve
� � 211 Oacute
� � 212 Ocircumflex
� � 213 Otilde
� � 214 Odieresis
� � 215 multiply
� � 216 Oslash
� � 217 Ugrave
� � 218 Uacute
� � 219 Ucircumflex
� � 220 Udieresis
� � 221 Yacute
� � 222 Thorn
� � 223 germandbls
� � 224 agrave
� � 225 aacute
� � 226 acircumflex
� � 227 atilde
� � 228 adieresis
� � 229 aring
� � 230 ae
� � 231 ccedilla
� � 232 egrave
� � 233 eacute
� � 234 ecircumflex
� � 235 edieresis
� � 236 igrave
� � 237 iacute
� � 238 icircumflex
� � 239 idieresis
� � 240 eth
� � 241 ntilde
� � 242 ograve
� � 243 oacute
� � 244 ocircumflex
� � 245 otilde
� � 246 odieresis
� � 247 divide
� � 248 oslash
� � 249 ugrave
� � 250 uacute
� � 251 ucircumflex
� � 252 udieresis
� � 253 yacute
� � 254 thorn
� � 255 ydieresis
Named Characters
The named character idiom is the standard way to specify special characters in roff systems. They can be embed-
ded into the document text by using escape sequences. groff(7) describes how these escape sequences look. The
character names can consist of quite arbitrary characters from the ASCII or Latin-1 code set, not only alphanu-
meric characters. Here some examples:
\c named character having the name c, which consists of a single character (length 1).
\(ch named character having the 2-character name ch.
\[char_name]
named character having the name char_name (having length 1, 2, 3, ...).
In groff, each 8bit input character can also referred to by the construct \n[charn] where n is the decimal code
of the character, a number between 0 and 255 without leading zeros. They are mapped onto glyph entities using
the .trin request. Moreover, new character names can be created by the .char request; see groff(7).
Output Input PostScript Notes
name name
� \[-D] Eth Icelandic uppercase eth
� \[Sd] eth Icelandic lowercase eth
� \[TP] Thorn Icelandic uppercase thorn
� \[Tp] thorn Icelandic lowercase thorn
� \[ss] germandbls German sharp s
Ligatures
ff \[ff] ff ff ligature
fi \[fi] fi fi ligature
fl \[fl] fl fl ligature
ffi \[Fi] ffi ffi ligature
ffl \[Fl] ffl ffl ligature
� \[AE] AE
� \[ae] ae
OE \[OE] OE
oe \[oe] oe
i \[.i] dotlessi i without a dot (Turkish)
Accented Characters
� \['A] Aacute
� \['E] Eacute
� \['I] Iacute
� \['O] Oacute
� \['U] Uacute
� \['Y] Yacute
� \['a] aacute
� \['e] eacute
� \['i] iacute
� \['o] oacute
� \['u] uacute
� \['y] yacute
� \[:A] Adieresis A with umlaut
� \[:E] Edieresis
� \[:I] Idieresis
� \[:O] Odieresis
� \[:U] Udieresis
� \[:a] adieresis
� \[:e] edieresis
� \[:i] idieresis
� \[:o] odieresis
� \[:u] udieresis
� \[:y] ydieresis
� \[^A] Acircumflex
� \[^E] Ecircumflex
� \[^I] Icircumflex
� \[^O] Ocircumflex
� \[^U] Ucircumflex
� \[^a] acircumflex
� \[^e] ecircumflex
� \[^i] icircumflex
� \[^o] ocircumflex
� \[^u] ucircumflex
� \[`A] Agrave
� \[`E] Egrave
� \[`I] Igrave
� \[`O] Ograve
� \[`U] Ugrave
� \[`a] agrave
� \[`e] egrave
� \[`i] igrave
� \[`o] ograve
� \[`u] ugrave
� \[~A] Atilde
� \[~N] Ntilde
� \[~O] Otilde
� \[~a] atilde
� \[~n] ntilde
� \[~o] otilde
� \[,C] Ccedilla
� \[,c] ccedilla
L \[/L] Lslash Polish L with a slash
l \[/l] lslash Polish l with a slash
� \[/O] Oslash Scandinavic slashed O
� \[/o] oslash Scandinavic slashed o
� \[oA] Aring
� \[oa] aring
Accents
" \[a"] hungarumlaut Hungarian umlaut
� \[a-] macron macron or bar accent
� \[a.] dotaccent dot accent
^ \[a^] circumflex circumflex accent
� \[aa] acute acute accent
` \[ga] grave grave accent
` \[ab] breve breve accent
� \[ac] cedilla cedilla accent
� \[ad] dieresis umlaut or dieresis
v \[ah] caron h�vek accent
� \[ao] ring ring or circle accent
~ \[a~] tilde tilde accent
� \[ho] ogonek hook or ogonek accent
^ \[ha] asciicircum ASCII circumflex, hat, caret
~ \[ti] asciitilde ASCII tilde, large tilde
Quotes
,, \[Bq] quotedblbase low double comma quote
, \[bq] quotesinglbase low single comma quote
" \[lq] quotedblleft
" \[rq] quotedblright
` \[oq] quoteleft single open quote
' \[cq] quoteright single closing quote (ASCII 39)
' \[aq] quotesingle apostrophe quote
" \[dq] quotedbl double quote (ASCII 34)
� \[Fo] guillemotleft
� \[Fc] guillemotright
< \[fo] guilsinglleft
> \[fc] guilsinglright
Punctuation
� \[r!] exclamdown
� \[r?] questiondown
-- \[em] emdash em dash
- \[en] endash en dash
- \[hy] hyphen
Brackets
[ \[lB] bracketleft
] \[rB] bracketright
{ \[lC] braceleft
} \[rC] braceright
< \[la] angleleft left angle bracket
> \[ra] angleright right angle bracket
Arrows
<- \[<-] arrowleft
-> \[->] arrowright
<-> \[<>] arrowboth horizontal double-headed arrow
v \[da] arrowdown
^ \[ua] arrowup
<= \[lA] arrowdblleft
=> \[rA] arrowdblright
<=> \[hA] arrowdblboth horizontal double-headed double arrow
v \[dA] arrowdbldown
^ \[uA] arrowdblup
- \[an] arrowhorizex horizontal arrow extension
Lines
| \[or] bar
| \[ba] bar
| \[br] br box rule with traditional troff metrics
_ \[ru] ru baseline rule
_ \[ul] ul underline with traditional troff metrics
| \[bv] bv bar vertical
� \[bb] brokenbar
/ \[sl] slash
\ \[rs] backslash
Text markers
O \[ci] circle
� \[bu] bullet
= \[dd] daggerdbl double dagger sign
- \[dg] dagger
<> \[lz] lozenge
[] \[sq] square
� \[ps] paragraph
� \[sc] section
<= \[lh] handleft
=> \[rh] handright
@ \[at] at
# \[sh] numbersign
_| \[CR] carriagereturn carriage return symbol
Legalize
� \[co] copyright
� \[rg] registered
tm \[tm] trademark
Currency symbols
$ \[Do] dollar
� \[ct] cent
EUR \[eu] official Euro symbol
EUR \[Eu] Euro font-specific Euro glyph variant
� \[Ye] yen
� \[Po] sterling British currency sign
� \[Cs] currency Scandinavian currency sign
f \[Fn] florin Dutch currency sign
Units
� \[de] degree
%o \[%0] perthousand per thousand, per mille sign
' \[fm] minute footmark, prime
\[sd] second
� \[mc] mu micro sign
� \[Of] ordfeminine
� \[Om] ordmasculine
Logical Symbols
^ \[AN] logicaland
v \[OR] logicalor
� \[no] logicalnot
3 \[te] existential there exists, existential quantifier
V \[fa] universal for all, universal quantifier
-) \[st] suchthat
.�. \[tf] therefore
Mathematical Symbols
� \[12] onehalf
� \[14] onequarter
� \[34] threequarters
� \[S1] onesuperior
� \[S2] twosuperior
� \[S3] threesuperior
+ \[pl] plusmath plus sign in special font
- \- minus minus sign from current font
� \[+-] plusminus
� \[t+-] plusminus text variant of `+-'
� \[pc] periodcentered multiplication dot
� \[md] dotmath
� \[mu] multiply
� \[tmu] multiply text variant of `mu'
� \[c*] circlemultiply multiply sign in a circle
+ \[c+] circleplus plus sign in a circle
� \[di] divide division sign
� \[tdi] divide text variant of `di'
/ \[f/] fraction bar for fractions
* \[**] asteriskmath
<= \[<=] lessequal
>= \[>=] greaterequal
!= \[!=] notequal
= \[eq] equalmath equals sign in special font
== \[==] equivalence
=~ \[=~] congruent
~ \[ap] similar
~~ \[~~] approxequal
~= \[~=] approxequal
oc \[pt] proportional
{} \[es] emptyset
E \[mo] element
E \[nm] notelement
(= \[sb] propersubset
=) \[sp] propersuperset
(_ \[ib] reflexsubset
_) \[ip] reflexsuperset
(^) \[ca] intersection intersection, cap
U \[cu] union union, cup
/ \[/_] angle
| \[pp] perpendicular
I \[is] integral
V \[gr] gradient
\/ \[sr] radical square root
� \[rn] overline
oo \[if] infinity
N \[Ah] aleph
I \[Im] Ifraktur Gothic I, imaginary
R \[Re] Rfraktur Gothic R, real
p \[wp] weierstrass Weierstrass p
a \[pd] partialdiff partial differentiation sign
Greek characters
A \[*A] Alpha
B \[*B] Beta
H \[*C] Xi
/\ \[*D] Delta
E \[*E] Epsilon
O \[*F] Phi
|� \[*G] Gamma
O \[*H] Theta
I \[*I] Iota
K \[*K] Kappa
/\ \[*L] Lambda
M \[*M] Mu
N \[*N] Nu
O \[*O] Omicron
TT \[*P] Pi
Y \[*Q] Psi
P \[*R] Rho
> \[*S] Sigma
T \[*T] Tau
Y \[*U] Upsilon
O \[*W] Omega
X \[*X] Chi
H \[*Y] Eta
Z \[*Z] Zeta
a \[*a] alpha
� \[*b] beta
E \[*c] xi
d \[*d] delta
e \[*e] epsilon
o \[*f] phi
o \[+f] phi1 variant phi
y \[*g] gamma
0 \[*h] theta
0 \[+h] theta1 variant theta
i \[*i] iota
k \[*k] kappa
\ \[*l] lambda
� \[*m] mu
v \[*n] nu
o \[*o] omicron
n \[*p] pi
w \[+p] omega1 variant pi, looking like omega
u \[*q] psi
p \[*r] rho
o \[*s] sigma
t \[*t] tau
u \[*u] upsilon
w \[*w] omega
x \[*x] chi
n \[*y] eta
C \[*z] zeta
s \[ts] sigma1 terminal sigma
Card symbols
RELATED
groff(1)
the GNU roff formatter.
groff(7)
a short reference of the groff formatting language.
An extension to the troff character set for Europe, E.G. Keizer, K.J. Simonsen, J. Akkerhuis; EUUG Newsletter,
Volume 9, No. 2, Summer 1989
The Unicode Standard <http://www.unicode.org>
CATEGORY