# What is the difference between the four kinds of Shift JIS?

The four kinds of Shift JIS are different from each other as described below:

(Shift JIS) | The most basic Shift JIS, support for JIS level 1 and 2 Kanji characters.
(Mac OS) | Based on Shift JIS, with extended support for such as Mac-dependent characters. Being used in OS 9 and earlier.
(Windows, DOS) | Based on Shift JIS, with extended support for such as Windows-dependent characters.
(Shift JIS X0213) | Support for JIS X 0213 character sets, which include JIS level 1 through 4 Kanji characters.

Though choosing an appropriate encoding varies from case to case, it is normally safer to use Japanese (Shift JIS). However, note that 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 | Not available
(Mac OS) | Available | Available | Available
(Windows, DOS) | Replaced with halfwidth backslash | Available | Available
(Shift JIS X0213) | Available | Replaced with fullwidth backslash | Replaced with fullwidth tilde

- You can check whether such encoding problematic characters are included in your document by choosing Show Incompatible Char via the File menu.

## See also

- Checking whether incompatible characters are included