The numero sign as a single glyph, despite its widespread usage internationally, is not a standard alphabetic symbol in virtually any European language. Its substitution by the two separate letters and is common.
In English, the non-ligature form is typical and is often used to abbreviate the word "number".. The ligature form does not appear on British or American QWERTY keyboards
French
The numero symbol is not in common use in France and does not appear on a standard AZERTY keyboard. Instead, the French Imprimerie nationale recommends the use of the form "no". The plural form "nos" can also be used. In practice, the "o" is often replaced by the degree symbol, which is visually similar to the superscript "o" and is easily accessible on an AZERTY keyboard.
Spanish
The numero sign is not typically used in Iberian Spanish, and it is not present on standard keyboard layouts. According to the Real Academia Española and the Fundéu BBVA, the word número is abbreviated per the Spanish typographic convention of letras voladas. The first letter of the word to be abbreviated are followed by a period; then, the final letter of the word are written as lowercase superscripts. This gives the abbreviations n.o and n.os. The abbreviation "no." is not used, because it might be mistaken for the Spanish word no. Furthermore, nro. and núm. are also acceptable abbreviations for número. The numero sign either as a one-character symbol or composed of the letter N plus the superscript "o" character is common in Latin America, where the interpolated period is sometimes not used in abbreviations.
Italian
The sign is usually replaced with the abbreviations "n." or "nº", the latter using a masculine ordinal indicator, rather than a superscript 'O'.
Although the letter is not in the Cyrillic alphabet, the numero sign is typeset in Russian publishing, and is available on Russian computer and typewriter keyboards. The sign is sometimes used in Russia in medical prescriptions as an abbreviation for the Latin word numero to denote the number of prescribed dosages, and on the price tags in drugstores and pharmacy websites to indicate number of unit doses in drug packages, although the standard abbreviation for use in prescriptions is .
Philippines
Because of more than three centuries of Spanish colonisation, the word número is found in almost all Philippine languages. 'No.' is its common notation in local languages as well as English.
"Nomor" in Indonesian and "nombor" in Malaysian; therefore "No." is commonly used as an abbreviation with standard spelling and full stop.
Nr.
In some languages, Nr., nr., nr or NR is used instead, reflecting the abbreviation of the language's word for 'number'. German Nummer is represented this way, and this language capitalises all nouns and abbreviations of nouns. Lithuanian uses it as well, and it is usually capitalised in bureaucratic contexts, especially with the meaning 'reference number' but in other contexts it follows the usual sentence capitalisation. It is most commonly lowercase in other languages, such as Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Estonian and Swedish. Some languages, such as Polish, omit the dot in abbreviations, if the last letter of the original word is present in the abbreviation.
Typing the symbol
On typewriters and computers that do not support this symbol, it is acceptable and commonplace to replace it with the trigraph "No.". On typewriters and computers that support the degree symbol or masculine ordinal indicator, a digraph starting with "N", such as "N°" or "Nº", may suffice as a substitute for the numero sign, but only if it is to be presented exclusively within visual media, in a typeface and sizing that results in a passable approximation of the numero sign. Such digraphs are generally inappropriate for representing the numero sign in formal publications or in computer data. On Russian computer keyboard layout, the № character is available and often located on the key. In Mac OS X, the character can be typed using "U.S. Extended" and "Irish Extended" keyboard layouts by typing. As of macOS 10.13, this combination does not yield the numero symbol when "U.S." or "U.S. International" is chosen. It will only yield the numero symbol when "ABC – Extended" is chosen as the input keyboard. In X11 systems with a compose key, the character can be typed using,,. Alternatively standard XIM style can be used: then. In Microsoft Windows and HTMLin general, the numero sign can be entered by the Unicode input methods № or №.
