ASCII 189
Vulgar Fraction One Half (½)
Latin-1 Supplement
One-half fraction (½).
Common uses & context
Decimal 189 (0xBD) is Vulgar Fraction One Half, part of the Latin-1 Supplement (128–255). One-half fraction (½). It renders as '½' and its binary byte is 10111101.
This is where single-byte ASCII ends and encoding matters. In Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) '½' is the single byte 0xBD. In UTF-8 — today's default for the web — the same character is the multi-byte sequence 0xC2 0xBD. 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+00BD, and in HTML you can write it as ½ or ½.
All encodings at a glance
| Decimal | 189 |
| Hexadecimal | 0xBD |
| Octal | 0275 |
| Binary | 10111101 |
| HTML numeric entity | ½ |
| HTML named entity | ½ |
| URL encoding | %BD |
| UTF-8 bytes | 0xC2 0xBD |
Code snippets
JavaScript
String.fromCharCode(189); // "½"
189.toString(16); // "bd"Python
chr(189) # control char ½
ord(chr(189)) # 189
hex(189) # '0xbd'HTML
½ <!-- named entity -->
½ <!-- numeric entity -->Programming notes
- ▸Single byte 0xBD in Latin-1, but the multi-byte sequence 0xC2 0xBD in UTF-8 — never assume one byte per character above code 127.
- ▸Unicode code point U+00BD; HTML entity ½.
- ▸If '½' 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+00BD. In UTF-8 it encodes to the byte sequence 0xC2 0xBD. In legacy Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) it is a single byte 0xBD, which is why Latin-1 files often appear as mojibake when interpreted as UTF-8.
Frequently asked questions
What character is ASCII code 189?
ASCII code 189 is the character '½' (Vulgar Fraction One Half). In hexadecimal it is 0xBD, in octal 0275, and in binary 10111101.
What is 0xBD in ASCII?
Hexadecimal 0xBD equals decimal 189, which is the character '½' (Vulgar Fraction One Half). To convert hex to ASCII yourself, read the two hex digits as a base-16 number (0xBD = 189) and look up that code point.
How do I write the character with code 189 in code?
In JavaScript use String.fromCharCode(189); in Python use chr(189); in HTML use the numeric entity ½ or the named entity ½. In a URL it is percent-encoded as %BD, and in UTF-8 it is stored as the byte sequence 0xC2 0xBD.
Is '½' part of standard ASCII?
No. Standard ASCII covers codes 0–127 only. '½' is code 189, part of the Latin-1 Supplement (128–255, sometimes called "extended ASCII"). It is a single byte 0xBD in Latin-1 but a multi-byte sequence (0xC2 0xBD) in UTF-8.