About this degree symbol
The degree sign is U+00B0, and it does double duty: 21° for temperature and 45° for an angle are the same character. Two lookalikes cause most of the confusion. The masculine ordinal indicator º (U+00BA) comes from Spanish and Portuguese ordinals and is slightly smaller and often underlined by the font, while the superscript zero ⁰ belongs to mathematical notation. Copying the real degree sign avoids all of it. There are also precomposed ℃ and ℉ characters, which look tidy but are best avoided in body text: most style guides and screen readers prefer the plain degree sign followed by the letter, written as 21 °C. For angles, the prime and double prime characters mark minutes and seconds of arc, which is why coordinates read 40°26′46″ rather than using quote marks.