How do I type the ‚ single low-9 quotation mark symbol?

On Windows, type 201A and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 201a. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.

What is the code for ‚?

Single Low-9 Quotation Mark is U+201A, written in HTML as &sbquo;. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.

What kind of character is ‚?

Single Low-9 Quotation Mark is filed under Opening punctuation in the General 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+201A · Opening punctuation

HTML entity

&sbquo;

Single Low-9 Quotation Mark Symbol ‚

‚ is single low-9 quotation mark, U+201A. Unicode also records it as “low single comma quotation mark”. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Opening punctuation.

Also known as

low single comma quotation mark

Unicode 1.0 called this character low single 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 ‚

used as opening single quotation mark in some languages

— annotation from the Unicode Standard, NamesList.txt

Codes & technical data

Unicode	`U+201A`
HTML hex	`‚`
HTML decimal	`‚`
CSS	`\201A`
JavaScript	`\u{201A}`
Python	`\U0000201A`
Java / C#	`\u201A`
Rust	`\u{201a}`
Swift	`\u{201A}`
PHP	`\u{201A}`
URL encoded	`%E2%80%9A`
UTF-8 bytes	`E2 80 9A`
UTF-16 bytes	`201A`
Base64	`4oCa`
Decimal	`8218`
HTML entity	`&sbquo;`
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.

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 `201A` then press `Alt`+`X`
macOS	Press `Ctrl`+`Cmd`+`Space`, then search for “single low-9 quotation mark”
Linux	Press `Ctrl`+`Shift`+`U`, type `201a`, press `Enter`
HTML	`&sbquo;`

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 ‚ single low-9 quotation mark symbol?: On Windows, type 201A and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 201a. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
What is the code for ‚?: Single Low-9 Quotation Mark is U+201A, written in HTML as &sbquo;. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
What kind of character is ‚?: Single Low-9 Quotation Mark is filed under Opening punctuation in the General 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.