Degree Sign vs Ring Above

The degree sign (°, U+00B0) is the correct character for expressing angles (90°) and temperatures (37°C), while the modifier letter ring above (˚, U+02DA) is a diacritic mark used in certain languages like Lithuanian and Czech to form letters such as ů (u with ring). The masculine ordinal indicator (º, U+00BA) is used in Spanish and Portuguese abbreviations like 1º (primero) and looks like a superscript 'o', but is technically a letter-like symbol, not a degree sign. All three characters appear as small circles raised above the baseline, making them visually interchangeable at typical body-text sizes — yet they have entirely different semantics that matter for search engines, screen readers, and data processing. In scientific and technical content, always use U+00B0 for degrees; in HTML it can be written as ° or °. A common keyboard shortcut to type the degree sign: Option+Shift+8 on macOS, or Alt+0176 on Windows numeric keypad.