The ¢ that prices a fraction of a dollar — and the one common currency symbol with no dedicated key on almost any keyboard. Click any symbol to copy it instantly.
The cent sign (¢, Unicode U+00A2) marks a subunit of currency — one-hundredth of a dollar, as in 99¢. It's one of the oldest currency symbols in the Unicode Latin-1 Supplement block, inherited from legacy 8-bit encodings, which is exactly why it types easily via an Alt code even though almost no keyboard gives it its own key the way $ gets one.
The correct Unicode cent sign, ready to paste after a number.
These get substituted for ¢ in practice — each is a distinct character with its own meaning.
¢ abbreviates "cent," from the Latin centum ("hundred") — a cent being one-hundredth of a dollar. The symbol itself, a lowercase c struck through with a vertical or diagonal line, emerged in American commercial and typewriter typography in the 19th century as a compact way to mark sub-dollar pricing without writing out "cents" in full.
¢ made it into Unicode by way of the Latin-1 Supplement block (U+00A2), which Unicode inherited wholesale from ISO 8859-1 and, before that, from the Windows-1252 and older 8-bit code pages many systems already used. That legacy placement is exactly why ¢ has a working Alt code (Alt+0162) on Windows going back decades — it predates Unicode entirely — even though it has never been given a dedicated key on a standard keyboard the way $ has.
| Platform / Tool | Method |
|---|---|
| Windows (Alt code) | Alt+0162 on the numeric keypad |
| Word / Windows (Unicode input) | Type 00A2, then press Alt+X |
| Mac | Option+4 |
| Mobile keyboard | Long-press the $ key |
| HTML | ¢ or ¢ |
CSS content | content: "\00A2" |
| LaTeX (textcomp package) | \textcent |
Physical typewriter and computer keyboards were designed around a limited set of keys, and ¢ lost out to more frequently used punctuation. Even though cent pricing (99¢) is everyday usage, ¢ has never had a dedicated key on a standard US keyboard the way $ does.
Mac: press Option+4. Windows: hold Alt and type 0162 on the numeric keypad, or type 00A2 then press Alt+X in Word. Mobile keyboards usually surface it under the long-press menu on the $ key.
They mean the same thing informally (50c vs 50¢), but ¢ is the standardized currency symbol recognized in print, finance, and typesetting, while a plain letter c is just a keyboard workaround when ¢ isn't easily accessible.
It's still standard in US and Canadian retail pricing, receipts, and financial documents. It's rarer in digital-first contexts where prices are written as decimals ($0.99) instead, but it hasn't been deprecated or replaced.
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