How do I type the ‹ single left-pointing angle quotation mark symbol?

On Windows, type 2039 and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 2039. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.

What is the code for ‹?

Single Left-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark is U+2039, written in HTML as &lsaquo;. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.

What kind of character is ‹?

Single Left-Pointing Angle 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.

U+2039 · Initial quote

HTML entity

&lsaquo;

Single Left-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark Symbol ‹

‹ is single left-pointing angle quotation mark, U+2039. Unicode also records it as “left pointing single guillemet”. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Initial quote.

Also known as

left pointing single guillemet

Unicode 1.0 called this character left pointing single 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+2039`
HTML hex	`‹`
HTML decimal	`‹`
CSS	`\2039`
JavaScript	`\u{2039}`
Python	`\U00002039`
Java / C#	`\u2039`
Rust	`\u{2039}`
Swift	`\u{2039}`
PHP	`\u{2039}`
URL encoded	`%E2%80%B9`
UTF-8 bytes	`E2 80 B9`
UTF-16 bytes	`2039`
Base64	`4oC5`
Decimal	`8249`
HTML entity	`&lsaquo;`
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.

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 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.

All 71 characters in General Punctuation →

How to type ‹

Windows	Type `2039` then press `Alt`+`X`
macOS	Press `Ctrl`+`Cmd`+`Space`, then search for “single left-pointing angle quotation mark”
Linux	Press `Ctrl`+`Shift`+`U`, type `2039`, press `Enter`
HTML	`&lsaquo;`

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 left-pointing angle quotation mark symbol?: On Windows, type 2039 and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 2039. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
What is the code for ‹?: Single Left-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark is U+2039, written in HTML as &lsaquo;. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
What kind of character is ‹?: Single Left-Pointing Angle 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.