Vulgar Fraction One Quarter ¼

The Vulgar Fraction One Quarter character (¼) is a standard HTML entity defined in the HTML specification. In HTML source code, it can be written using the named entity reference ¼, the decimal numeric character reference ¼, or the hexadecimal numeric reference ¼. The character is assigned Unicode code point U+00BC in the Universal Character Set.

The one-quarter fraction is a widely used precomposed character displaying ¼ as a single glyph. It is supported across virtually all fonts and rendering engines and is one of the three legacy fraction characters from ISO 8859-1 (along with ½ and ¾). Quarter fractions appear frequently in measurements, time, and music notation.

Mathematical HTML entities enable web authors to display proper mathematical notation without relying on images or specialized rendering libraries like MathJax or KaTeX. While complex equations and multi-line formulas may still benefit from dedicated math typesetting tools, individual symbols expressed as HTML entities render quickly, remain accessible to screen readers, and can be styled with CSS just like regular text content.

When deciding how to encode the Vulgar Fraction One Quarter character in your HTML documents, the named entity ¼ is generally the most readable choice for developers reviewing or maintaining source code. The decimal form ¼ and hexadecimal form ¼ are equally valid alternatives that work in contexts where named entities may not be supported, or when generating HTML output programmatically from server-side code. All three representations produce identical visual output in every modern web browser.

Use the one-quarter fraction in recipes (¼ teaspoon), measurements (¼ inch), time expressions (quarter past), and music notation (quarter note). As one of the original Latin-1 supplement characters, it has universal font support and renders reliably in all browsers and email clients.