Special characters

Use these terms to describe the special characters shown.

Character	Name
´	acute accent (not accent acute)
&	ampersand Don't use in place of and. See ampersand (&)
< >	angle brackets
’	apostrophe (publishing character)
'	apostrophe (customer-typed text)
*	asterisk It's OK to use star to refer to the key on a phone keypad.
@	at sign
\	backslash
{ }	braces (not curly brackets)
[ ]	brackets
^	caret, circumflex (not accent circumflex)
¢	cent sign
« »	chevrons, opening and closing Microsoft term, seldom used, especially in documentation. Also referred to as merge field characters in Word.
©	copyright symbol
†	dagger
°	degree symbol
÷	division sign
$	dollar sign
[[ ]]	double brackets
…	ellipsis (singular), ellipses (plural) Don't add space between ellipsis points.
—	em dash
–	en dash
=	equal sign (not equals sign)
€	euro symbol
!	exclamation point (not exclamation mark)
`	grave accent (not accent grave)
>	greater than sign If used in conjunction with the less than sign to enclose a character string such as an HTML or XML tag, right angle bracket is OK.
≥	greater than or equal to sign
-	hyphen
"	inch mark
<	less than sign If used in conjunction with the greater than sign to enclose a character string such as an HTML or XML tag, left angle bracket is OK.
≤	less than or equal to sign
–	minus sign (use en dash)
×	multiplication sign Use * instead if necessary to match software.
≠	not equal to
#	number sign or hashtag In general, use number sign instead of pound sign to refer to the # symbol. In social media, use hashtag. Use pound key when referring to the phone keypad button.
¶	paragraph mark
( )	parentheses (plural), opening or closing parenthesis (singular)
%	percent
π	pi
|	pipe, vertical bar, or OR logical operator
+	plus sign Don’t use to replace words like and, over, or plus. See plus sign (+)
±	plus or minus sign
?	question mark
“ ”	quotation marks (not quotes or quote marks) Curly quotation marks is OK if necessary to distinguish from straight quotation marks.
" "	straight quotation marks (not quotes or quote marks)
‘ ’	single quotation marks or single curly quotation marks (not quotes or quote marks)
' '	single straight quotation marks (not quotes or quote marks)
®	registered trademark symbol
§	section
/	slash (not virgule)
~	tilde Don't use in place of about or approximately.
™	trademark symbol
_	underscore