Character Set Introducers 1940 VARCHAR(10) CHARACTER SET utf8 NATIONAL VARCHAR(10) NVARCHAR(10) NCHAR VARCHAR(10) NATIONAL CHARACTER VARYING(10) NATIONAL CHAR VARYING(10) SELECT N’some text’; SELECT n’some text’; SELECT _utf8’some text’; NATIONAL CHARACTER(10) NCHAR(10) SELECT ’abc’; SELECT _latin1’abc’; SELECT _binary’abc’; SELECT _utf8mb4’abc’ COLLATE utf8mb4_danish_ci; SELECT _latin1 X’4D7953514C’; SELECT _utf8mb4 0x4D7953514C COLLATE utf8mb4_danish_ci; SELECT _latin1 b’1000001’; SELECT _utf8mb4 0b1000001 COLLATE utf8mb4_danish_ci; Character string literals can be designated as binary strings by using the  _binary  introducer. Hexadecimal literals and bit-value literals are binary strings by default, so  _binary  is permitted, but normally unnecessary.  _binary  may be useful to preserve a hexadecimal or bit literal as a binary string in contexts for which the literal is otherwise treated as a number. For example, bit operations permit numeric or binary string arguments in MySQL 8.0 and higher, but treat hexadecimal and bit literals as numbers by Character set introducers and the  COLLATE  clause are implemented according to standard SQL specifications. Examples: For character set literals, an introducer indicates the character set for the following string, but does not change how the parser performs escape processing within the string. Escapes are always interpreted by the parser according to the character set given by  character_set_connection . For additional discussion and examples, see Section 10.3.6, “Character String Literal Character Set and Collation” . For character string literals, space between the introducer and the string is permitted but optional. The  _ charset_name  expression is formally called an  introducer . It tells the parser, “the string that follows uses character set  charset_name .”  An introducer does not change the string to the introducer character set like  CONVERT()  would do. It does not change the string value, although padding may occur. The introducer is just a signal. A character string literal, hexadecimal literal, or bit-value literal may have an optional character set introducer and  COLLATE  clause, to designate it as a string that uses a particular character set and collation: [_ charset_name ]  literal  [COLLATE  collation_name ] 10.3.8 Character Set Introducers You can use  N’ literal ’  (or  n’ literal ’ ) to create a string in the national character set. These statements are equivalent: As are these: