Plus-Minus Sign
On Windows, hold Alt and type 0177 on the numeric keypad to insert plus-minus sign.
- Alt code
- Alt+0177
- HTML entity
- ±
- Unicode
- U+00B1
About this symbol
The plus-minus sign shows a value with a margin either way, as in 5 ± 0.1 mm, or the two answers of an equation, as in x = ±2.
The French mathematician Albert Girard used a version of it in 1626, written with the word ou, meaning “or”. The modern sign appears in William Oughtred’s Clavis Mathematicae of 1631.
Unicode facts
- Official name
- PLUS-MINUS SIGN
- Also called
- Biquintile (astrological aspect: 144°)
- Type
- Maths symbol
- Unicode block
- Latin-1 Supplement
- Unicode group
- Latin-1 punctuation and symbols
- Added in
- Unicode 1.1 (1993)
Click the symbol or any value at the top of the page to copy it. See the full Windows Extended Codes: 0128 to 0255 chart for related characters.