Degree, Feet, Inches, Minutes, Seconds

by Christoph Koeberlin

The Degree Sign

°
Degree
U+00B0
⇧ + ⌥ + 8
Alt + 248
Degree Fahrenheit Sign
U+2109
Degree Celsius Sign
U+2103

The degree sign appears most frequently in temperature and simple angle indications. Thereby applies:

Without an additional unit, the degree sign belongs to the number and is appended without a blank space.

With additional unit the degree sign becomes part of it and is separated from the number with (non-breaking) space.

The Unicode predefined characters degrees Celsius (℃) and degrees Fahrenheit (℉) are not common and are included in very few fonts.

Sub Zero

The minus sign precedes the number in any case without a space: -5° or -5 °C.
The real minus sign is adapted in position and proportion to the digits and the other mathemathical characters and cannot be reached directly from the keyboard. Alternatively, en dash may be used.

Minus Sign
U+2212
⌥ + 2212
Alt + 8722
En Dash
U+2013
⌥ + -
Alt + 0150

Do not confuse with:

˚
Ring accent (≠ degree °)
U+02DA
⌥ + K
Alt + 0000
º
Masculine ordinal indicator
U+00BA
⌥ + 0
Alt + 0186
Superscript Zero
U+2070

Feet, Inches, Minutes, Seconds

Feet/ Minute Sign
U+2032
Inch/ Second Sign
U+2033
Tertia Sign (Triple Prime)
U+2034
Dot Sign (Quadruple Prime)
U+2057

The lengths feet and inches from the Anglo-American system of measurement (Imperial and US customary measurement systems) have partially found their way into the German-speaking world, where the metric system actually applies:

In geographical indications, angles are subdivided into minutes and seconds of arc and in nautical terms also into tertians. The unit is placed directly after the number and is spaced from the next number by a (non-breaking) space:

Full Circle = 360°,
1° = 60′ — one degree consists of 60 minutes of arc,
1′ = 60″ — one arc minute consists of 60 arc seconds
1″ = 60‴ — one arc second consists of 60 tertiae.

The dot character (⁗) stands for the former unit of length dot, which, however, has nothing to do with typographic dot units.

Appearance

The strokes should be slightly inclined.

Substitution

Since the real characters are rarely found in fonts, the typographically meaningless encoding characters may be used as a substitute here (and outside programming codes only here).

'
Single code mark (Feet, minutes)
U+0027
'
'
"
Double code mark (Inches, seconds)
U+0022
⇧ + '
⇧ + '

Do not confuse with:

Single opening / German single closing
U+2018
Alt + ]
Alt + 0145
Apostroph
U+2019
⇧ + ⌥ + #
Alt + 0146
´
Acute
U+00B4
⇧ + ⌥ + e
Alt + 0180
`
Grave
U+0060
`
`
Opening / German closing
U+201C
Alt + [
Alt + 0147
Closing
U+201D
⇧ + ⌥ + [
Alt + 0148
˝
Double acute (hungarumlaut)
U+02DD
⇧ + ⌥ + G

Further Reading; Online

Further Reading; Offline