U+201B · Initial quote
Single High-Reversed-9 Quotation Mark Symbol ‛
‛ is single high-reversed-9 quotation mark, U+201B. Unicode also records it as “single reversed comma quotation mark”. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Initial quote.
Also known as
- single reversed comma quotation mark
Unicode 1.0 called this character single 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 2018, but differs in appearance
— annotation from the Unicode Standard, NamesList.txt
Codes & technical data
| Unicode | U+201B | |
|---|---|---|
| HTML hex | ‛ | |
| HTML decimal | ‛ | |
| CSS | \201B | |
| JavaScript | \u{201B} | |
| Python | \U0000201B | |
| Java / C# | \u201B | |
| Rust | \u{201b} | |
| Swift | \u{201B} | |
| PHP | \u{201B} | |
| URL encoded | %E2%80%9B | |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 80 9B | |
| UTF-16 bytes | 201B | |
| Base64 | 4oCb | |
| Decimal | 8219 | |
| 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.
How to type ‛
| Windows | Type 201B then press Alt+X |
|---|---|
| macOS | Press Ctrl+Cmd+Space, then search for “single high-reversed-9 quotation mark” |
| Linux | Press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 201b, 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 ‛ single high-reversed-9 quotation mark symbol?
- On Windows, type 201B and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 201b. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
- What is the code for ‛?
- Single High-Reversed-9 Quotation Mark is U+201B. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
- What kind of character is ‛?
- Single 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.