U+0098 "SOS" START OF STRING Unicode Character

U+0098 "SOS" START OF STRING is a control character from the C1 control code set, originally defined for use in telecommunication protocols to mark the beginning of a string of data in a transmission. It does not represent a visible glyph or symbol, but rather serves as an invisible instruction for systems to interpret the subsequent characters as a cohesive sequence. Unlike the more widely known Morse code distress signal, this U+0098 code point is a rarely used technical artifact, primarily relevant to legacy data processing and certain text encoding standards like ISO 8859 and Windows code pages.

General Properties

Code Point	U+0098
Version Added	1.1
Unicode 1.0 Name	Start of String
Block	Latin-1 Supplement
General Category	Control
Canonical Combining Class	Not Reordered
Bidirectional Class	Boundary Neutral
Alias	SOS (abbreviation) START OF STRING (control)

Encodings

HTML Decimal Encoding	˜
HTML Hex Encoding	˜
UTF-8 Encoding	0xC2 0x98
UTF-16 Encoding	0x0098
UTF-32 Encoding	0x00000098
C/C++/Java Escape	\u0098

Unicode Properties

NFC Quick Check	Yes
NFD Quick Check	Yes
NFKC Quick Check	Yes
NFKD Quick Check	Yes
Numeric Type	None
Numeric Value	NaN
Line Break	Combining Mark
Script	Common
Script Extensions	Common
Indic Syllabic Category	Other
Vertical Orientation	Rotated
Grapheme Cluster Break	Control
Word Break	Other
Sentence Break	Other