# See characters and their exact bytes

Inspect a UTF-8 character and Windows line ending without allowing the browser to normalise the original bytes.

Source: https://help.smartfact.ai/octetbench/guides/hidden-characters

Audience: Operator

Inspect a UTF-8 character and Windows line ending without allowing the browser to normalise the original bytes. This is isolated practice with invented records. Nothing is uploaded or written into a live system.

## See characters and their exact bytes

1. **Choose hexadecimal input**

   Choose hexadecimal input.

   Hexadecimal describes the bytes directly, without relying on a pasted line ending.

2. **Enter UTF-8 and line-ending bytes**

   Enter UTF-8 and line-ending bytes.

   These bytes contain A, the two-byte character é, a carriage return and a line feed.

3. **Apply the exact bytes**

   Apply the exact bytes.

   Apply checks the complete input before replacing the current buffer. The five bytes remain available in every supported view.

4. **Reveal the line ending**

   Reveal the line ending.

   Escaped text makes the carriage return and line feed visible as separate control characters. It does not add them to the buffer.

[Watch or practise this chapter](https://help.smartfact.ai/octetbench/demo?guide=hidden-characters&chapter=hidden-characters&audience=office)

Review the result and its limits before using it in another application.