ASCII 169
Copyright Sign (©)
Latin-1 Supplement
Copyright symbol (©). Universally recognized copyright notice mark. Available via ⌥+G on macOS.
Common uses & context
Decimal 169 (0xA9) is Copyright Sign, part of the Latin-1 Supplement (128–255). Copyright symbol (©). Universally recognized copyright notice mark. Available via ⌥+G on macOS. It renders as '©' and its binary byte is 10101001.
This is where single-byte ASCII ends and encoding matters. In Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) '©' is the single byte 0xA9. In UTF-8 — today's default for the web — the same character is the multi-byte sequence 0xC2 0xA9. Treating a Latin-1 byte as UTF-8 (or vice versa) is the usual reason accented letters and symbols turn into mojibake like é or €. The Unicode code point is U+00A9, and in HTML you can write it as © or ©.
All encodings at a glance
| Decimal | 169 |
| Hexadecimal | 0xA9 |
| Octal | 0251 |
| Binary | 10101001 |
| HTML numeric entity | © |
| HTML named entity | © |
| URL encoding | %A9 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 0xC2 0xA9 |
Code snippets
JavaScript
String.fromCharCode(169); // "©"
169.toString(16); // "a9"Python
chr(169) # control char ©
ord(chr(169)) # 169
hex(169) # '0xa9'HTML
© <!-- named entity -->
© <!-- numeric entity -->Programming notes
- ▸Single byte 0xA9 in Latin-1, but the multi-byte sequence 0xC2 0xA9 in UTF-8 — never assume one byte per character above code 127.
- ▸Unicode code point U+00A9; HTML entity ©.
- ▸If '©' shows as mojibake, the encoding declared and the encoding used disagree — align both on UTF-8.
Unicode & UTF-8 note
In Unicode this is U+00A9. In UTF-8 it encodes to the byte sequence 0xC2 0xA9. In legacy Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) it is a single byte 0xA9, which is why Latin-1 files often appear as mojibake when interpreted as UTF-8.
Frequently asked questions
What character is ASCII code 169?
ASCII code 169 is the character '©' (Copyright Sign). In hexadecimal it is 0xA9, in octal 0251, and in binary 10101001.
What is 0xA9 in ASCII?
Hexadecimal 0xA9 equals decimal 169, which is the character '©' (Copyright Sign). To convert hex to ASCII yourself, read the two hex digits as a base-16 number (0xA9 = 169) and look up that code point.
How do I write the character with code 169 in code?
In JavaScript use String.fromCharCode(169); in Python use chr(169); in HTML use the numeric entity © or the named entity ©. In a URL it is percent-encoded as %A9, and in UTF-8 it is stored as the byte sequence 0xC2 0xA9.
Is '©' part of standard ASCII?
No. Standard ASCII covers codes 0–127 only. '©' is code 169, part of the Latin-1 Supplement (128–255, sometimes called "extended ASCII"). It is a single byte 0xA9 in Latin-1 but a multi-byte sequence (0xC2 0xA9) in UTF-8.