U+FF08 · Opening punctuation
Fullwidth Left Parenthesis Symbol （
（ is fullwidth left parenthesis, U+FF08. Unicode records it as a compatibility form of ( (wide form). It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Opening punctuation.
Also known as
Unicode 1.0 called this character fullwidth opening parenthesis. The standard renamed it later, but documents, fonts and font-editing tools from that era still use the old name.
Codes & technical data
| Unicode | U+FF08 | |
|---|---|---|
| HTML hex | （ | |
| HTML decimal | （ | |
| CSS | \FF08 | |
| JavaScript | \u{FF08} | |
| Python | \U0000FF08 | |
| Java / C# | \uFF08 | |
| Rust | \u{ff08} | |
| Swift | \u{FF08} | |
| PHP | \u{FF08} | |
| URL encoded | %EF%BC%88 | |
| UTF-8 bytes | EF BC 88 | |
| UTF-16 bytes | FF08 | |
| Base64 | 77yI | |
| Decimal | 65288 | |
| Decomposes to | ( (wide form) | |
| Category | Opening punctuation (Ps) | |
| Introduced | Unicode 1.1 | |
Will （ survive being pasted?
- Normalisation. No. Anything that applies NFKC — search indexes, usernames, domain names, programming identifiers — rewrites （ as
(. Safe for display, not for storage. - 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 parenthesis characters
Unicode names 13 characters ending in “parenthesis”. They differ by direction, weight or decoration rather than by meaning.
Nearby in Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms
Latin characters at the width of a CJK ideograph, and katakana at half width — a compatibility block for legacy East Asian encodings. Fullwidth text is often used online for a spaced-out aesthetic; it normalises straight back to ASCII.
How to type （
| Windows | Type FF08 then press Alt+X |
|---|---|
| macOS | Press Ctrl+Cmd+Space, then search for “fullwidth left parenthesis” |
| Linux | Press Ctrl+Shift+U, type ff08, press Enter |
| HTML | （ |
About Unicode’s Opening punctuation category
This is an opening bracket. Editors that highlight matching pairs, and bidirectional text algorithms, both key off this category rather than off the glyph.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I type the （ fullwidth left parenthesis symbol?
- On Windows, type FF08 and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then ff08. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
- What is the code for （?
- Fullwidth Left Parenthesis is U+FF08. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
- Will （ survive being pasted anywhere?
- Not always. Fullwidth Left Parenthesis is a compatibility character: any system that applies Unicode NFKC normalisation — search indexes, usernames, identifiers — replaces it with (. Use it for display, not where text is normalised.