Greek Letters: The Full Alphabet to Copy and Paste

All 24 letters in both cases, with their names and what each is used for. Plus a warning almost nobody gives: there are two different “μ” characters in Unicode.

Tap a letter to copy it

All 24 Greek letters in both cases, plus the variants Unicode encodes separately.

Capitals

Lower case

Variants

Alternative shapes with code points of their own. The final sigma ς closes a word; the rest are typographic variants used mainly in mathematics.

The Greek alphabet letter by letter

Twenty-four letters, each with its English name and the use you are most likely to recognise it by. The use column records the commonest meaning in science and mathematics, which is where most people meet these letters in the first place.

Upper Lower Name Code points Most common use
Α α alpha U+0391 · U+03B1 Angles · significance level
Β β beta U+0392 · U+03B2 Coefficients · beta particles
Γ γ gamma U+0393 · U+03B3 Gamma radiation · the Γ function
Δ δ delta U+0394 · U+03B4 Change · increment
Ε ε epsilon U+0395 · U+03B5 An arbitrarily small quantity
Ζ ζ zeta U+0396 · U+03B6 The Riemann zeta function
Η η eta U+0397 · U+03B7 Efficiency · viscosity
Θ θ theta U+0398 · U+03B8 Angles in trigonometry
Ι ι iota U+0399 · U+03B9 Rarely used
Κ κ kappa U+039A · U+03BA Conductivity · inter-rater agreement
Λ λ lambda U+039B · U+03BB Wavelength
Μ μ mu U+039C · U+03BC Micron · mean · friction
Ν ν nu U+039D · U+03BD Frequency
Ξ ξ xi U+039E · U+03BE Auxiliary variables
Ο ο omicron U+039F · U+03BF Rarely used
Π π pi U+03A0 · U+03C0 The number pi · the Π product
Ρ ρ rho U+03A1 · U+03C1 Density · correlation
Σ σ sigma U+03A3 · U+03C3 The Σ sum · standard deviation
Τ τ tau U+03A4 · U+03C4 Time constant · torque
Υ υ upsilon U+03A5 · U+03C5 Rarely used
Φ φ phi U+03A6 · U+03C6 The golden ratio · flux
Χ χ chi U+03A7 · U+03C7 Chi squared
Ψ ψ psi U+03A8 · U+03C8 The wave function
Ω ω omega U+03A9 · U+03C9 Ohm · angular velocity

There are two “μ” and two “Ω” in Unicode

This is the detail no Greek alphabet table bothers to mention, and the one that causes the most trouble in practice. A few Greek letters are encoded twice: once as a letter of the alphabet, and once as a technical symbol inherited from character sets that predate Unicode.

Technical symbol Greek letter Under NFC Under NFKC
µ Micro sign · U+00B5 μ Greek mu · U+03BC Still different Unified
Ω Ohm sign · U+03A9 Ω Greek omega · U+03A9 Unified Unified

Notice that the two cases do not behave the same way. The ohm sign is treated as a canonical equivalent of omega, so NFC normalisation — the one many systems apply by default — already unifies them. The micro sign, by contrast, survives NFC and only becomes a Greek mu under NFKC, a more aggressive and much less commonly applied normalisation.

The consequence is concrete: if a document says “5 µm” with the micro sign and someone searches for “5 μm” with the Greek letter, the search finds nothing. Both strings look identical on screen. The same thing happens when sorting alphabetically, comparing spreadsheet cells, or deduplicating a list of part numbers where half were typed on a Mac and half on a PC.

The practical rule: for the SI micro prefix, use the Greek mu μ (U+03BC), which is the one on this page. The micro sign is what some keyboards produce — Option + m on a Mac, among others — so if you are copying from someone else’s document it is worth normalising. Our text cleaner applies that normalisation in a single pass.

The sigma that changes shape at the end

Greek has a quirk the Latin alphabet does not share: sigma is written differently depending on where it falls. Inside a word it is σ; when it closes one, it becomes ς. Same letter, same sound, but two characters with different code points.

That produces behaviour which surprises anyone processing Greek text for the first time. Converting ς to upper case gives Σ, because the distinction does not exist in capitals. But converting that Σ back to lower case yields σ, the medial form, not the final one: the information that the letter closed a word is lost in transit. Uppercasing a Greek text and lowercasing it again does not give you the original text back.

It is worth knowing where that bites. Case-insensitive comparison in most languages handles it correctly, because the case-folding tables map both σ and ς to the same value. Naive code that lowercases both strings before comparing them also works. What breaks is anything that uppercases for display and later reads the result back as data — a heading, a spreadsheet column, an all-caps form field.

The other variants in the grid — ϑ, ϕ, ϖ, ϱ — are a different matter: they do not depend on position but on typographic tradition. Unicode encodes them separately because mathematics uses them with meanings distinct from their ordinary forms, so θ and ϑ can appear in the same formula standing for different things.

How to type them on each system

No Western keyboard carries the full Greek alphabet; these are the shortcuts that cover the letters people actually need.

Windows

Alt +224

Alt + 224 gives α; Alt + 225 gives β, and so on for the common ones.

It only covers a handful; for the rest, copy from the grid.

★ A nuance nobody flags

macOS

⌥ Option +w

Option + w gives ∑; Option + p gives π; Option + m gives µ.

Careful: that µ is the micro sign, not the Greek mu. See below.

Linux

Ctrl +⇧ Shift +U +3b1

The letter’s hexadecimal code point, then space.

3b1 is α, 3b2 is β: the same numbers as the Unicode points.

Word & LaTeX

\alpha +space

In Word, inside an equation, \alpha turns into α.

LaTeX is the same: \alpha, \beta, \Omega for the capital.

HTML

α

Every letter has a named entity: β π Ω.

Capitals take an initial capital: Α versus α.

Android & iOS

Greek keyboard

Added under Settings → Keyboard → Languages.

For a single letter it is quicker to copy it from here.

Beware the “mathematical” Greek letters

If you copy a formula out of an academic PDF or an equation editor, the letter you get may not be the one on this page. Unicode reserves an entire block, starting at U+1D6A8, for mathematical alphanumerics: bold, italic and sans-serif versions of the whole Greek alphabet, designed so a formula keeps its styling even when the surrounding typeface changes.

The problem is that they are different code points. A search engine that does not normalise will treat that mathematical alpha as a character unrelated to the ordinary α, and many form fields will reject it outright for living outside the Basic Multilingual Plane — which also means it costs two UTF-16 units instead of one. NFKC normalisation does fold them back down to the plain letters, but not every system applies it.

For running text — an email, a blog post, the title of a paper — use the letters from the standard Greek block, which are the ones you copy above. Leave the mathematical variants to equation editors, which insert them by themselves when they are actually needed.

Frequently asked questions

How do I type Greek letters on my keyboard?
On Windows a few Alt codes work (Alt + 224 for α, Alt + 225 for β), but they only cover a handful. On Mac, Option + p gives π and Option + w gives ∑. In Word and LaTeX you can type \alpha and press space. For any letter of the alphabet, the fastest route is tapping it in the grid on this page and pasting it.
How many letters does the Greek alphabet have?
Twenty-four, each with an upper and a lower case form. On top of those 24 comes the final sigma ς, which is not a separate letter but the shape sigma takes when it closes a word, plus several typographic variants such as ϑ or ϕ that Unicode encodes separately for mathematical use.
Why are there two μ symbols in Unicode?
Historical compatibility. The micro sign µ (U+00B5) came from character sets that predate Unicode and was kept so old documents would not break; the Greek mu μ (U+03BC) is the letter proper. They look almost identical but they are distinct characters, and NFC normalisation does not unify them: only NFKC does. That is why searching for “μm” can fail to find text written with “µm”.
Which should I use for microns, µ or μ?
The International System defines the micro prefix using the Greek letter mu, so the correct form is μm with U+03BC. The micro sign U+00B5 still works and is what a Mac keyboard produces with Option + m, but if your text will be searched, sorted or processed it is worth normalising it to the Greek letter.
What is the difference between σ and ς?
They are the same letter, sigma, in two positions: σ is used inside a word and ς only at the end. It is the only Greek letter with that dual form. One curious consequence: converting ς to upper case gives Σ, but converting that Σ back to lower case returns σ, not ς. The information that it stood at the end of a word is lost along the way.
Are the Greek letters in formulas the same as these?
Not always. Unicode has a mathematical alphanumeric block with its own bold, italic and sans-serif versions starting at U+1D6A8. They look similar but they are different code points, and many search engines do not treat them as equivalent to the ordinary ones. For running text, use the letters on this page, which come from the standard Greek block.
Can I use Greek letters in a username?
It depends on the service. Many networks only accept Latin letters, digits and a symbol or two in the handle, though they do allow them in the display name. Bear in mind too that letters such as Α, Β, Ε, Ζ, Η, Ι, Κ, Μ, Ν, Ο, Ρ, Τ, Υ and Χ are visually identical to their Latin counterparts, and some platforms block them for exactly that reason.

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