How do I type the 〘 left white tortoise shell bracket symbol?

On Windows, type 3018 and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 3018. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.

What is the code for 〘?

Left White Tortoise Shell Bracket is U+3018. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.

What kind of character is 〘?

Left White Tortoise Shell Bracket is filed under Opening punctuation in the CJK Symbols and Punctuation block, and was introduced in Unicode 1.1. This is an opening bracket. Editors that highlight matching pairs, and bidirectional text algorithms, both key off this category rather than off the glyph.

U+3018 · Opening punctuation

Left White Tortoise Shell Bracket Symbol 〘

〘 is left white tortoise shell bracket, U+3018, in the CJK Symbols and Punctuation block. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Opening punctuation.

Also known as

Unicode 1.0 called this character opening white tortoise shell bracket. 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+3018`
HTML hex	`〘`
HTML decimal	`〘`
CSS	`\3018`
JavaScript	`\u{3018}`
Python	`\U00003018`
Java / C#	`\u3018`
Rust	`\u{3018}`
Swift	`\u{3018}`
PHP	`\u{3018}`
URL encoded	`%E3%80%98`
UTF-8 bytes	`E3 80 98`
UTF-16 bytes	`3018`
Base64	`44CY`
Decimal	`12312`
Category	Opening punctuation (Ps)
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.

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.

⟬U+27ECmathematical left white tortoise shell bracket

Other bracket characters

Unicode names 24 characters ending in “bracket”. They differ by direction, weight or decoration rather than by meaning.

Nearby in CJK Symbols and Punctuation

The punctuation Chinese, Japanese and Korean typography needs — the ideographic full stop and comma, corner brackets, the iteration mark, and the wave dash.

All 48 characters in CJK Symbols and Punctuation →

How to type 〘

Windows	Type `3018` then press `Alt`+`X`
macOS	Press `Ctrl`+`Cmd`+`Space`, then search for “left white tortoise shell bracket”
Linux	Press `Ctrl`+`Shift`+`U`, type `3018`, 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 white tortoise shell bracket symbol?: On Windows, type 3018 and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 3018. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
What is the code for 〘?: Left White Tortoise Shell Bracket is U+3018. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
What kind of character is 〘?: Left White Tortoise Shell Bracket is filed under Opening punctuation in the CJK Symbols and Punctuation block, and was introduced in Unicode 1.1. This is an opening bracket. Editors that highlight matching pairs, and bidirectional text algorithms, both key off this category rather than off the glyph.