U+2329 · Opening punctuation
Left-Pointing Angle Bracket Symbol 〈
〈 is left-pointing angle bracket, U+2329. Unicode records it as a compatibility form of 〈. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Opening punctuation.
Also known as
Unicode 1.0 called this character bra. 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+2329 | |
|---|---|---|
| HTML hex | 〈 | |
| HTML decimal | 〈 | |
| CSS | \2329 | |
| JavaScript | \u{2329} | |
| Python | \U00002329 | |
| Java / C# | \u2329 | |
| Rust | \u{2329} | |
| Swift | \u{2329} | |
| PHP | \u{2329} | |
| URL encoded | %E2%8C%A9 | |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 8C A9 | |
| UTF-16 bytes | 2329 | |
| Base64 | 4oyp | |
| Decimal | 9001 | |
| Decomposes to | 〈 | |
| 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.
Unicode cross-references
The standard points readers of 〈 at these characters — usually because they look alike, or because one is the correct choice where the other is often used by mistake.
Other bracket characters
Unicode names 24 characters ending in “bracket”. They differ by direction, weight or decoration rather than by meaning.
Nearby in Miscellaneous Technical
Symbols from engineering, electronics and computing: APL operators, keyboard keys, dentistry and cartography marks. The ⌘ ⌥ ⇧ ⏎ keys people paste into shortcut documentation live here.
How to type 〈
| Windows | Type 2329 then press Alt+X |
|---|---|
| macOS | Press Ctrl+Cmd+Space, then search for “left-pointing angle bracket” |
| Linux | Press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 2329, 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 〈 left-pointing angle bracket symbol?
- On Windows, type 2329 and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 2329. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
- What is the code for 〈?
- Left-Pointing Angle Bracket is U+2329. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
- Will 〈 survive being pasted anywhere?
- Not always. Left-Pointing Angle Bracket 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.