# Use four kinds of Shift JIS properly in CotEditor on Mac

There are multiple variations of Japanese Shift JIS encoding, and CotEditor handles the four types of Japanese Shift JIS encoding as distinct with the names as described below. Although “Japanese (Mac OS)” and “Japanese (Windows, DOS)” do not include “Shift JIS” in their names, both are also extended versions of Shift JIS. Choosing an appropriate encoding varies from case to case, but it is normally safer to use the normal “Japanese (Shift JIS).”

Encoding name | IANA charset name | Description
--- | --- | ---
Japanese (Shift JIS) | shift_jis | The most basic Shift JIS supporting JIS level 1 and 2 kanji characters.
Japanese (Shift JIS X0213) | Shift_JIS | Support JIS X0213 character set, which includes JIS level 1 through 4 kanji characters.
Japanese (Mac OS) | (x-mac-japanese) | Based on Shift JIS, with extended support for such as Mac-dependent characters. Being used in Mac OS 9 and earlier.
Japanese (Windows, DOS) | cp932 | Based on Shift JIS, with extended support for such as Windows-dependent characters.

Even among members of the same Shift JIS family, there are differences between these encodings in the way of dealing with particular characters as below:

| Halfwidth Yen sign (¥) | Halfwidth backslash (\) | Halfwidth tilde (~)
Shift JIS | Available | Replaced with fullwidth backslash (＼) | Replaced with question mark (?)
Shift JIS X0213 | Available | Replaced with fullwidth backslash (＼) | Replaced with fullwidth tilde (〜)
Mac OS | Available | Available | Available
Windows, DOS | Replaced with backslash (\) | Available | Available

- You can inspect whether such encoding incompatible characters are included in your document by choosing View > Inspector > Warnings.

## See also

- Find characters incompatible with document encoding