Comparing Characters in Windows-1252, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-15
The character encodings ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-15 and Windows-1252 are very similar and easily confused. This leads to several typical problems. The following chart shows the differences between these encodings and are useful for debugging the associated problems.
ISO-8859-1 vs. Windows-1252
ISO-8859-1 (also called Latin-1) is identical to Windows-1252 (also called CP1252) except for the code points 128-159 (0x80-0x9F). ISO-8859-1 assigns several control codes in this range. Windows-1252 has several characters, punctuation, arithmetic and business symbols assigned to these code points.
Typical Problems
- Mislabeling text encoded in Windows-1252 as ISO-8859-1 and then converting from ISO-8859-1 to Unicode or other encodings causes the characters in the range 128-159 to be lost. They are converted as if they were control codes and typically display as white space, a specialized question mark, or a square showing the 4 hex digits of the code point. Using an ISO-8859-1 font that does not have the correct glyphs for the Windows-1252 characters will cause the characters to be displayed incorrectly.
- HTML and XML use Unicode code points as the values in Numeric Character References (NCR). Numeric Character References are character escapes written as &#dddd; or &#xhhhh; where the decimal or hexadecimal values are the Unicode code points. Because the first 256 characters in Unicode are identical to the characters in ISO-8859-1, people fall into the habit of using the character code point the are familiar with to create an NCR. However, for the characters in the range of 128-159 in Windows-1252, these are the wrong values. For example the Euro (€) is at code point 0x80 in Windows-1252, but in Unicode it is U+20AC. € is the NCR for a control code and will not display as the Euro. The correct NCR is €.
The Comparison Table below shows the Unicode code points associated with the Windows-1252 characters in the range 128-159.
ISO-8859-1 vs. ISO-8859-15
These 2 encodings are identical except for 8 code points, which causes confusion between the two of them as well as with Windows-1252. For additional details on ISO-8859-15, see Comparing ISO-8859-1 and ISO-8859-15.
Comparison Table
Here are the characters in the range 128-159 in Windows 1252, with their Unicode code points, UTF-8 byte values, and ISO-8859-15 code points if they are different from ISO-8859-1.
Terminology Note:
- NCR = Numeric Character Reference
- CER = Character Entity Reference
- CP1252 = Windows-1252
| Code Point | UTF-8 bytes | NCR* | Character | CER* or NCR* | Character Name | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CP1252* | ISO 8859-15 | Unicode | ||||||||
| (Dec.) | (Hex) | (Hex) | (Hex) | #1 | #2 | #3 | (Dec.) | (Hex) | ||
| 128 | 80 | A4 | 20AC | E2 | 82 | AC | € | € | € | Euro Sign |
| 129 | 81 | UNASSIGNED | ||||||||
| 130 | 82 | 201A | E2 | 80 | 9A | ‚ | ‚ | ‚ | Single Low-9 Quotation Mark | |
| 131 | 83 | 192 | C6 | 92 | ƒ | ƒ | ƒ | Latin Small Letter F With Hook | ||
| 132 | 84 | 201E | E2 | 80 | 9E | „ | „ | „ | Double Low-9 Quotation Mark | |
| 133 | 85 | 2026 | E2 | 80 | A6 | … | … | … | Horizontal Ellipsis | |
| 134 | 86 | 2020 | E2 | 80 | A0 | † | † | † | Dagger | |
| 135 | 87 | 2021 | E2 | 80 | A1 | ‡ | ‡ | ‡ | Double Dagger | |
| 136 | 88 | 2C6 | CB | 86 | ˆ | ˆ | ˆ | Modifier Letter Circumflex Accent | ||
| 137 | 89 | 2030 | E2 | 80 | B0 | ‰ | ‰ | ‰ | Per Mille Sign | |
| 138 | 8A | A6 | 160 | C5 | A0 | Š | Š | Š | Latin Capital Letter S With Caron | |
| 139 | 8B | 2039 | E2 | 80 | B9 | ‹ | ‹ | ‹ | Single Left-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark | |
| 140 | 8C | BC | 152 | C5 | 92 | Π| Π| Π| Latin Capital Ligature OE | |
| 141 | 8D | UNASSIGNED | ||||||||
| 142 | 8E | B4 | 17D | C5 | BD | Ž | Ž | Ž | Latin Capital Letter Z With Caron | |
| 143 | 8F | UNASSIGNED | ||||||||
| 144 | 90 | UNASSIGNED | ||||||||
| 145 | 91 | 2018 | E2 | 80 | 98 | ‘ | ‘ | ‘ | Left Single Quotation Mark | |
| 146 | 92 | 2019 | E2 | 80 | 99 | ’ | ’ | ’ | Right Single Quotation Mark | |
| 147 | 93 | 201C | E2 | 80 | 9C | “ | “ | “ | Left Double Quotation Mark | |
| 148 | 94 | 201D | E2 | 80 | 9D | ” | ” | ” | Right Double Quotation Mark | |
| 149 | 95 | 2022 | E2 | 80 | A2 | • | • | • | Bullet | |
| 150 | 96 | 2013 | E2 | 80 | 93 | – | – | – | En Dash | |
| 151 | 97 | 2014 | E2 | 80 | 94 | — | — | — | Em Dash | |
| 152 | 98 | 2DC | CB | 9C | ˜ | ˜ | ˜ | Small Tilde | ||
| 153 | 99 | 2122 | E2 | 84 | A2 | ™ | ™ | ™ | Trade Mark Sign | |
| 154 | 9A | A8 | 161 | C5 | A1 | š | š | š | Latin Small Letter S With Caron | |
| 155 | 9B | 203A | E2 | 80 | BA | › | › | › | Single Right-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark | |
| 156 | 9C | BD | 153 | C5 | 93 | œ | œ | œ | Latin Small Ligature OE | |
| 157 | 9D | UNASSIGNED | ||||||||
| 158 | 9E | B8 | 17E | C5 | BE | ž | ž | ž | Latin Small Letter Z With Caron | |
| 159 | 9F | BE | 178 | C5 | B8 | Ÿ | Ÿ | Ÿ | Latin Capital Letter Y With Diaeresis | |
Additional References
- Encoding Debug Table
- Encoding Problem: Treating UTF-8 Bytes as Latin-1
- Encoding Problem: Double Mis-Conversion
- Encoding Problem: ISO-8859-1 vs Windows-1252
- Comparing ISO-8859-1 vs. ISO-8859-15
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