Masculine Ordinal Indicator º

The Masculine Ordinal Indicator character (º) is a standard HTML entity defined in the HTML specification. In HTML source code, it can be written using the named entity reference º, the decimal numeric character reference º, or the hexadecimal numeric reference º. The character is assigned Unicode code point U+00BA in the Universal Character Set.

The masculine ordinal indicator (º) is a superscript letter 'o' used in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and other Romance languages to form masculine ordinal numbers (1º = primero). It can be confused with the degree sign (°) but they are distinct characters with different meanings and slightly different appearances.

Symbol entities encompass a wide variety of special characters used in legal disclaimers, intellectual property notices, typographic ornaments, card suit indicators, and miscellaneous notation throughout web content. These characters appear in website footers for copyright notices, product pages for trademark symbols, academic papers for dagger footnote markers, and decorative or gaming contexts for card suits and stars.

When deciding how to encode the Masculine Ordinal Indicator character in your HTML documents, the named entity º is generally the most readable choice for developers reviewing or maintaining source code. The decimal form º and hexadecimal form º 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 masculine ordinal indicator in Spanish (1º for 'primero'), Portuguese, and Italian ordinal numbers. Take care not to confuse it with the degree sign — ordinals use the ordinal indicator, temperatures use the degree sign. The distinction is important for accessible and correct multilingual content.