U+208D · Opening punctuation
Subscript Left Parenthesis Symbol ₍
₍ is subscript left parenthesis, U+208D. Unicode records it as a compatibility form of ( (sub form). It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Opening punctuation.
Also known as
Unicode 1.0 called this character subscript opening parenthesis. 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+208D | |
|---|---|---|
| HTML hex | ₍ | |
| HTML decimal | ₍ | |
| CSS | \208D | |
| JavaScript | \u{208D} | |
| Python | \U0000208D | |
| Java / C# | \u208D | |
| Rust | \u{208d} | |
| Swift | \u{208D} | |
| PHP | \u{208D} | |
| URL encoded | %E2%82%8D | |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 82 8D | |
| UTF-16 bytes | 208D | |
| Base64 | 4oKN | |
| Decimal | 8333 | |
| Decomposes to | ( (sub form) | |
| Category | Opening punctuation (Ps) | |
| Introduced | Unicode 1.1 | |
Will ₍ survive being pasted?
- Normalisation. No. Anything that applies NFKC — search indexes, usernames, domain names, programming identifiers — rewrites ₍ as
(. Safe for display, not for storage. - 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 parenthesis characters
Unicode names 13 characters ending in “parenthesis”. They differ by direction, weight or decoration rather than by meaning.
Nearby in Superscripts and Subscripts
Raised and lowered digits and a handful of letters, as single characters rather than as formatting. Useful precisely where formatting is unavailable — filenames, usernames, plain-text fields — though the alphabet is incomplete and always has been.
How to type ₍
| Windows | Type 208D then press Alt+X |
|---|---|
| macOS | Press Ctrl+Cmd+Space, then search for “subscript left parenthesis” |
| Linux | Press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 208d, 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 ₍ subscript left parenthesis symbol?
- On Windows, type 208D and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 208d. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
- What is the code for ₍?
- Subscript Left Parenthesis is U+208D. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
- Will ₍ survive being pasted anywhere?
- Not always. Subscript Left Parenthesis is a compatibility character: any system that applies Unicode NFKC normalisation — search indexes, usernames, identifiers — replaces it with (. Use it for display, not where text is normalised.