UTF16BE

UTF-16BE, or UTF-16 Big Endian, is a Unicode encoding form that represents text as 16-bit code units arranged in big-endian byte order. Like UTF-16LE, it can encode all Unicode characters, including those outside the Basic Multilingual Plane via surrogate pairs.

Endianness and BOM: Data may begin with a Byte Order Mark, which for UTF-16BE is the two-byte sequence 0xFE 0xFF. The BOM signals big-endian order; without a BOM, the recipient must know the intended endianness in advance. Distinguishing UTF-16BE from UTF-16LE is necessary for correct decoding.

Code units and surrogates: Each 16-bit unit encodes a BMP character directly. Characters beyond the BMP use a high surrogate in range 0xD800–0xDBFF followed by a low surrogate 0xDC00–0xDFFF, together representing U+10000–U+10FFFF in BE order.

Interoperability and usage: UTF-16BE is common where a standard requires big-endian encoding or where a system's native endianness is big-endian. In practice, UTF-16BE is less common on the web than UTF-8, and many platforms prefer UTF-8 or UTF-16 with a BOM to allow autodetection.

Limitations and issues: Endianness must be agreed upon for correct decoding, BOM handling can complicate portability, and some tools or protocols do not fully support UTF-16BE. When exchanging text, explicit encoding declaration or a BOM helps prevent misinterpretation.

See also Unicode, UTF-8, UTF-16, endianness.