How do I type the degree symbol under X11 (using a default English keyboard layout)?

Question

I'm trying to put in an email the temperature outside in degrees. On my Mac, the degree symbol (°) is Option+Shift+8. But I'm writing the email in Thunderbird on an Ubuntu 10.10 with the default US English keyboard layout. What key combination do I use to get the degree symbol under X11?

EDIT: Gert successfully answered the question... but, bonus points for any easier to use keystroke than what's in his answer!

Answer 1

Set up a Compose key. On Ubuntu, this is easily done in the keyboard preferences, “Layout” tab, “Options” subdialog. Caps Lock is a good choice as it's pretty much useless (all remotely serious editors have a command to make the selection uppercase for the rare times it's needed).

Press Compose followed by two characters (occasionally three) to enter a character you don't have on your keyboard. Usually the resulting character combines the two characters you type, for example Compose ' a enters á and Compose s s enters ß. The degree symbol ° is one of the less memorable combinations, it's on Compose o o.

Answer 2

Ctrl + Shift + u (this will show an underlined u), and with those keys held down, type the unicode value (in this case B0). Then, with Ctrl + Shift still pressed, press enter. You might find that in the last step, you do not need to press enter, and that you only need release all keys.

Full list here.

Answer 3

You can also use Alt Gr+Shift+0.

Answer 4

As a follow-up to @Gert's answer (since I cannot comment yet), I've found a slightly different method is required when using Raspbian Jessie:

with Ctrl and Shift held down, type u B 0 and then release all keys.

Answer 5

in vi

• hold down ctrl, press and release v, release ctrl button
• hit u and release u
• type 00b0

the ° will appear, continue typing normal characters

this does not work at a shell/terminal prompt, this is in the VI or VIM editor.

Answer 6

ALT+0 works for me (I'm using Gentoo Linux).

Answer 7

If you're using the US international keyboard (us_intl), you can do Alt Gr+Shift+;

Answer 8

You can find the way to display any symbol using xmodmap:

sh$ xmodmap -pke | grep degre
keycode  19 = 0 parenright agrave 0 braceright degree at degree
#             1      2        3   4      5        6   7   8

For each keycode, it shows what symbol is associated depending on the modifiers:

1. no modifier
2. Shift+Key
3. mode_switch+Key
4. mode_switch+Shift+Key
5. AltGr+Key
6. AltGr+Shift+Key
7. ???
8. ???

In that example, I can see "degree" is in 6th position and the plain key (position 1) is 0. So I can obtain the degree by pressing AltGr+Shift+0 in that order: depending on your configuration, if you press Shift first, Shift+AltGr is understood as an emulation of the Meta key which has different bindings.

Answer 9

Yeah, systems vary on this - so do Android keyboards - unless you have Google's Pixel or Nokia, you likely have some custom keyboard, not the default Android one, but so do I - I think both Swype (not available anymore, but I love it even if the skins can't be bought (or bought ones redownloaded anymore), syncing is off, etc. Nuance has dropped support - they have excellent speech recognition system available for various systems, including Android (works as keyboard) that let's you do anything you would be able with keyboard, but they should have kept the lesser version (Dragon, that's why it was called Swype + Dragon), but it's still the only one with selection/editing mode available... BUT I DIGRESS...

On most systems, there's a way to compose characters not on keyboard, and on Linux it can be highly configurable, depending on your desktop environment. For example, I have set it to 4th level of right Ctrl (So AltGr+Right Ctrl). Then I type oo to get degree symbol. There are easily found a whole load of list of characters and keys you can enter them with. I would be surprised if OS X didn't have similar compose key, but not that much if it wasn't configurable. However composing with two 'o' characters is the easiest way to get the degree symbol. The OS X advice relies on entering Unicode value of the character. That's not possible on all system, and very cumbersome to remember, especially if you need more than one composed character, like me with µMatrix/µBlock Origin :D But it does allow entering ANY unicode character, which has it's uses. On Linux you might have to do it on terminal and copy output and paste it to, say, email program. But for common characters, but non-alphabets/numbers composing is easier. Like € and ¢ (well, I don't need compose for euro, but it's "e" and "-"; cent is "c" and "|".

There were many more lacking and some more complicated answers here, so I hope this helps.

Answer 10

hold down 'alt' key and while holding it down, hold down the 'shift' key too. and while holding down both of those, hold down the 'u' key. now, release all three. a 'u' with an underscore should appear. now press and release the 'b' key and then press and release the '0' (zero) key. now, press the 'enter' key. a '°' should appear.

Answer 11

This symbol is used to represent degrees in many different fields, such as angle or temperatures. It is obtained by drawing a small circle as a superscript. The Unicode of the icon is U + 00B0.

on Mac:

Using keyboard shortcuts : OPTION + SHIFT + 8

on PC:

Press and hold the ALT key and type 0 1 7 6 on the numeric keypad of your keyboard. Make sure the NumLock is on and type 0176 with the leading zero. If there is no numeric keypad, press and hold the Fn before typing the 0176 numbers of degree symbol.

on iPhone & iPad:

• Step 1: Click the 123 button on the screen keyboard to open the number keyboard.

• Step 2: Hold down zero (i.e. 0), and move your finger to choose the degree symbol (i.e. °).

on LaTeX:

gensymb

\usepackage{gensymb}
\begin{document}
The right angle is 90\si{\degree}.
\end{document}

textcomp

\usepackage{textcomp}
\begin{document}
The round angle is 360\si{\textdegree}.
\end{document}

siunitx

\usepackage{siunitx}
\begin{document}
Degree symbol: 45\si{\degree}.
\end{document}

circ

^{\circ}

Check out more: https://www.degree-symbol.com/