Fraction Symbols

Unicode calls these vulgar fractions, from the Latin vulgaris, common: a fraction written with a top and bottom number rather than as a decimal. The three everyone knows, ½ ¼ ¾, were already in the Latin-1 character set in the 1980s, which is why they have Alt codes and appear on old typewriter keyboards. Unicode 1.0 added the rest of the useful set in 1991: thirds ⅓ ⅔, fifths ⅕ ⅖ ⅗ ⅘, sixths ⅙ ⅚ and eighths ⅛ ⅜ ⅝ ⅞. Only fractions already in lowest terms exist: there is no ²⁄₄ or ⁴⁄₆ because they would be ½ and ⅔.

Three stragglers arrived in Unicode 5.2 (2009) for Japanese broadcasting text: ⅐ ⅑ ⅒, and the strangest member of the family, ↉, zero thirds. It exists because baseball innings pitched are counted in thirds, so a pitcher's line reads 5↉, 5⅓ or 5⅔. The last character in the set is ⅟, Fraction Numerator One: a 1 with a slash already attached, meant to take a small denominator after it, so ⅟₁₂ and ⅟₂₀ read as one twelfth and one twentieth.

Because every one of these is a single character, they survive anywhere plain text does: Instagram captions, TikTok and X bios, Discord names, recipe apps, spreadsheet cells, file names and subject lines. Formatting-based fractions (Word's equation editor, superscript styling) are lost the moment you paste into a chat box; ½ is not.

Build any fraction with the fraction slash ⁄ and small digits

There is no single character for 7/16 or 17/25, and Unicode never will add one; instead it gives you parts. Write the top number in superscript digits ⁰ ¹ ² ³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹, then the fraction slash ⁄ (U+2044, not the ordinary keyboard slash), then the bottom number in subscript digits ₀ ₁ ₂ ₃ ₄ ₅ ₆ ₇ ₈ ₉. The result, ⁷⁄₁₆ or ¹⁷⁄₂₅ or ³⁄₁₀₀₀, reads like a typeset fraction in almost every font. Add ⁻ for a negative numerator (⁻³⁄₄) or ₊ ₋ inside a denominator. Mixed numbers are just a whole number followed by the fraction: 2¹⁄₃, 1⅞, 3⁵⁄₁₆.

The fraction slash has a second trick. In fonts with the OpenType frac feature, and in professional layout apps like InDesign, the sequence 1⁄2 typed with ordinary digits around U+2044 is drawn automatically as a stacked fraction. The maths ∕ (division slash, U+2215) looks nearly identical but is meant for division in formulas and does not trigger that behaviour, and the keyboard / never does. If a fraction you pasted stays flat, check which slash you used.

Two gotchas. Superscript ¹ ² ³ are older characters from Latin-1 while ⁰ and ⁴ to ⁹ come from a later block, so in some fonts ¹²³ and ⁴⁵⁶ sit at slightly different heights; the full set is on the Superscript & Subscript Numbers page. And a text search for 1/2 will not find ½ or ¹⁄₂, because the slash characters differ. If your readers may search for a value, write it the plain way as well.

How to type ½ and other fraction symbols in Word, Excel, Mac and iPhone

Windows: hold Alt and type 0189 on the numeric keypad for ½, 0188 for ¼, 0190 for ¾. There are no Alt codes for the other fractions; copy them from this page or use the Word trick below. Word: AutoCorrect turns 1/2, 1/4 and 3/4 into ½ ¼ ¾ as you type (and only those three). For any other fraction, type its Unicode code and press Alt + X: 2153 becomes ⅓, 2158 becomes ⅘, 215E becomes ⅞. For a tall stacked fraction with any numbers, press Alt + = to open an equation, type 7/16 and a space. Google Docs: Insert › Special characters and search for the word fraction, or add your own shortcuts under Tools › Preferences › Substitutions.

Excel is a trap: typing 1/2 into a cell gives you the date 2 January. Type 0 1/2 instead, or format the cell as Fraction so 0.5 displays as 1/2; the ½ character itself is text and will not calculate, so use it only for labels. Mac: open the Character Viewer with Ctrl + Cmd + Space and search for fraction, or add 1/3 → ⅓ under System Settings › Keyboard › Text Replacements. iPhone and Android: the keyboards have no fraction key, so paste from here, or save the ones you use as a text replacement (iPhone: Settings › General › Keyboard › Text Replacement; Gboard: Settings › Dictionary › Personal dictionary) so that typing 1/2 offers ½.

One more place fractions matter: measurements. Americans write 1½ cups, 5⅝ inches and 2¼ lb; British and European recipes mix ½ with grams; shoe sizes come in halves, and knitting and woodworking charts are full of eighths and sixteenths. The symbols keep those numbers compact and unmistakable where a decimal or a spaced 1 1/2 would be misread.

Division, per cent and the letters that look like fractions

A fraction is a division, and the division signs belong on the same page. ÷ is the school obelus, ➗ its emoji twin, ∶ the ratio colon used in 1∶2 scale and 16∶9 screens, and ⟌ the long-division bracket. Per cent, per mille and per ten thousand, % ‰ ‱, are fractions with a fixed denominator of 100, 1,000 and 10,000: ‰ is how blood alcohol is written in much of Europe (0.5‰) and how railway gradients are marked. The rest of the arithmetic signs are on the Math Symbols page.

Unicode also keeps five letter pairs typeset like fractions, inherited from old typewriters and business printing: ℅ care of (for addressing a letter via someone else), ℀ account of, ℁ addressed to the subject, ℆ cada una, Spanish for each one on invoices, and ⅍, the Danish and Norwegian A/S for a joint-stock company. They are the only characters that put letters on either side of a fraction bar, and they are a quiet way to make c/o look right in a one-line address.

Fractions in other scripts: anna fractions, Siyaq, Meroitic twelfths

Before decimal money, most of the world divided its coins and measures into halves, quarters and sixteenths, and the scripts of India still carry the marks. North Indic, Odia, Tamil and Malayalam each have a six-character set for 1/16, 1/8, 3/16, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, the sixteenth being the anna, one sixteenth of a rupee until 1957. Bengali has a separate run of currency numerators ৴ ৵ ৶ ৷ ৸ and a denominator-sixteen mark ৹ for the same purpose. Tamil goes much further, down to 1/320, because its traditional land measures were built from a 320-part whole; those twenty characters were added in Unicode 12.0 (2019). Telugu writes fractions with two sets of digits, one for odd and one for even powers of four.

Bookkeepers had their own systems. Indic Siyaq and Ottoman Siyaq numerals, used in Mughal and Ottoman account ledgers, include 𞲭 𞲮 𞲯 and 𞴼 𞴽; the Rumi numerals of Fez have 𐹻 𐹼 𐹽 𐹾. Older still: Greek inscriptions marked a half with 𐅵, Coptic with ⳽, Kharoshthi traders with 𐩈, Sumerian scribes with cuneiform 𒑤 for half a gur of grain, and the Meroitic kingdom of Kush counted in twelfths, 𐧶 to 𐦼. These need a font that covers their block (the Noto font family covers all of them), so expect empty boxes on some phones; they are here so that the family is complete.