How do I type the « left-pointing double angle quotation mark symbol?

On Windows, type 00AB and press Alt+X. You can also hold Alt and type 171 on the numeric keypad. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 00ab. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.

What is the code for «?

Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark is U+00AB, written in HTML as «. In UTF-8 it takes 2 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.

What kind of character is «?

Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark is filed under Initial quote in the Latin-1 Supplement 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+00AB · Initial quote

HTML entity

Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark Symbol «

« is left-pointing double angle quotation mark. Write it in HTML as « or paste the character directly. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Initial quote.

Also known as

left guillemet
chevrons (in typography)

Unicode 1.0 called this character left pointing guillemet. The standard renamed it later, but documents, fonts and font-editing tools from that era still use the old name.

What Unicode says about «

usually opening, sometimes closing

— annotation from the Unicode Standard, NamesList.txt

Codes & technical data

Unicode	`U+00AB`
HTML hex	`«`
HTML decimal	`«`
CSS	`\00AB`
JavaScript	`\u{00AB}`
Python	`\U000000AB`
Java / C#	`\u00AB`
Rust	`\u{00ab}`
Swift	`\u{00AB}`
PHP	`\u{00AB}`
URL encoded	`%C2%AB`
UTF-8 bytes	`C2 AB`
UTF-16 bytes	`00AB`
Base64	`wqs=`
Decimal	`171`
HTML entity	`«`
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. « exists in Latin-1 and Windows-1252, so even software that predates Unicode can store it.
Size. 2 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 quotation characters

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

Nearby in Latin-1 Supplement

The upper half of ISO 8859-1: the accented letters and the symbols that Western European printing needed but ASCII had no room for. This is where ° ± × ÷ £ ¥ © ® ½ ¼ live, which makes it the most-copied symbol block in Unicode despite being one of the oldest.

All 29 characters in Latin-1 Supplement →

How to type «

Windows	Type `00AB` then press `Alt`+`X`, or hold `Alt` and type `171` on the numeric keypad
macOS	Press `Ctrl`+`Cmd`+`Space`, then search for “left-pointing double angle quotation mark”
Linux	Press `Ctrl`+`Shift`+`U`, type `00ab`, 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 « left-pointing double angle quotation mark symbol?: On Windows, type 00AB and press Alt+X. You can also hold Alt and type 171 on the numeric keypad. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 00ab. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
What is the code for «?: Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark is U+00AB, written in HTML as «. In UTF-8 it takes 2 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
What kind of character is «?: Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark is filed under Initial quote in the Latin-1 Supplement 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.