Guide Python Beginner

4.13 Escape Characters

The full table of Python escape sequences — newline, tab, backslash, quotes, carriage return, and backspace — with examples of each.

1 min read

Escape sequences let you embed special or hard-to-type characters inside an ordinary quoted string, using a backslash followed by a code.

Escape	Meaning	Example
`\n`	Newline	`"a\nb"` → two lines
`\t`	Tab	`"a\tb"` → `"a b"`
`\\`	Literal backslash	`"a\\b"` → `a\b`
`\'`	Literal single quote	`'it\'s'` → `it's`
`\"`	Literal double quote	`"say \"hi\""` → `say "hi"`
`\r`	Carriage return	used in some line-ending formats
`\b`	Backspace	moves cursor back one position

>>> print("a\nb")
a
b
>>> print("a\tb")
a    b
>>> print("say \"hi\"")
say "hi"

The full escape-character reference, including octal/hex codes, is covered in 9.3 Escape Characters.

Quick Interview Answer

“An escape sequence is a backslash followed by a code that represents a special character inside a string — \n for newline, \t for tab, \\ for a literal backslash, \'/\" for a quote that would otherwise end the string early.”

Common Mistakes

Forgetting to escape a quote character that matches the string’s own delimiter, causing the string to end early and raise a SyntaxError.
Confusing \n (a two-character escape sequence Python turns into one newline byte) with an actual line break typed into a triple-quoted string — both work, but they’re not the same mechanism.

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