Oslash

Oslash refers to the Latin letter formed by an O with a stroke, written as uppercase Ø and lowercase ø. It is a distinct character used in the Danish and Norwegian alphabets and is part of the broader set of Latin-script letters with diacritical marks. The name “oslash” is common in typography and computing contexts to denote this symbol.

In Danish and Norwegian, Ø represents a specific vowel sound, typically described as a mid-front rounded vowel [ø]. It contrasts with the regular O and is treated as a separate letter in alphabetic ordering. The pronunciation can vary by dialect, but it is generally a rounded, front vowel heard in many common words such as øl (beer) and økonomi (economy).

Historically, Ø was adopted into the Danish and Norwegian alphabets to distinguish a distinct vowel sound from O. It has since become a standard character in those languages, and is also used in some other Nordic languages and earlier transliterations, though it is not part of the standard English alphabet.

Encoding and representation: In Unicode, uppercase Ø is U+00D8 and lowercase ø is U+00F8. In HTML, the character can be represented by the named entities Ø and ø or by the corresponding decimal codes Ø and ø. In many keyboard layouts, Ø/ø is accessible via dedicated keys on Danish and Norwegian keyboards; on other layouts, they can be entered via Alt codes (e.g., Alt+0216 for Ø and Alt+0248 for ø on Windows) or standard input methods on macOS (such as Option+O on many systems).

See also: Danish alphabet, Norwegian alphabet, Unicode Latin-1 supplement, O slash symbol.