How do I type the ‟ double high-reversed-9 quotation mark symbol?

On Windows, type 201F and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 201f. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.

What is the code for ‟?

Double High-Reversed-9 Quotation Mark is U+201F. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.

What kind of character is ‟?

Double High-Reversed-9 Quotation Mark is filed under Initial quote in the General Punctuation block, and was introduced in Unicode 1.1. This is an initial quotation mark. Which glyph is "initial" depends on the language — German opens with the mark English uses to close.

U+201F · Initial quote

Double High-Reversed-9 Quotation Mark Symbol ‟

‟ is double high-reversed-9 quotation mark, U+201F. Unicode also records it as “double reversed comma quotation mark”. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Initial quote.

Also known as

double reversed comma quotation mark

Unicode 1.0 called this character double reversed comma quotation mark. The standard renamed it later, but documents, fonts and font-editing tools from that era still use the old name.

What Unicode says about ‟

has same semantic as 201C, but differs in appearance

— annotation from the Unicode Standard, NamesList.txt

Codes & technical data

Unicode	`U+201F`
HTML hex	`‟`
HTML decimal	`‟`
CSS	`\201F`
JavaScript	`\u{201F}`
Python	`\U0000201F`
Java / C#	`\u201F`
Rust	`\u{201f}`
Swift	`\u{201F}`
PHP	`\u{201F}`
URL encoded	`%E2%80%9F`
UTF-8 bytes	`E2 80 9F`
UTF-16 bytes	`201F`
Base64	`4oCf`
Decimal	`8223`
Category	Initial quote (Pi)
Introduced	Unicode 1.1

Will ‟ survive being pasted?

Normalisation. Yes. ‟ is unchanged by NFKC, so it survives normalising systems intact.
Legacy encodings. ‟ is Unicode-only — it has no Latin-1 equivalent, so a system stuck on an 8-bit encoding cannot represent it.
Size. 3 bytes in UTF-8. Character-limited fields — SMS, bios, some form validators — usually count bytes, not characters.

Other quotation characters

Unicode names 14 characters ending in “quotation”. They differ by direction, weight or decoration rather than by meaning.

Nearby in General Punctuation

The typographic marks that word processors quietly substitute for their ASCII lookalikes — real quotation marks, en and em dashes, the ellipsis. It also holds the invisible characters: zero-width spaces, joiners and directional marks that do work without drawing anything.

All 71 characters in General Punctuation →

How to type ‟

Windows	Type `201F` then press `Alt`+`X`
macOS	Press `Ctrl`+`Cmd`+`Space`, then search for “double high-reversed-9 quotation mark”
Linux	Press `Ctrl`+`Shift`+`U`, type `201f`, press `Enter`
HTML	`‟`

About Unicode’s Initial quote category

This is an initial quotation mark. Which glyph is "initial" depends on the language — German opens with the mark English uses to close.

Frequently asked questions

How do I type the ‟ double high-reversed-9 quotation mark symbol?: On Windows, type 201F and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 201f. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
What is the code for ‟?: Double High-Reversed-9 Quotation Mark is U+201F. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
What kind of character is ‟?: Double High-Reversed-9 Quotation Mark is filed under Initial quote in the General Punctuation block, and was introduced in Unicode 1.1. This is an initial quotation mark. Which glyph is "initial" depends on the language — German opens with the mark English uses to close.