For a while now I’ve used option-0 on OS X to type a degree symbol, primarily for tweets about how blasted cold this winter has been. But I’ve accidentally transgressed. That symbol (º) is not in fact a degree symbol, though it sure looks a lot like one. It’s actually an ordinal indicator. Sayonara to my typographic street cred…

To get the real degree symbol (°), type option-shift-8 instead. Now if only I could go back and edit all those tweets… (I blame iOS, where holding down the 0 key does in fact get you a degree symbol.)