Left Angle Bracket 〈

〈 (U+3008) is a standard Unicode character that you can copy and paste anywhere text is accepted. This page provides a concise reference with safe tips, internal links, and practical guidance so you can use it reliably across apps and platforms.

What it is and where it’s used: Left Angle Bracket is part of the Symbols family (block: CJK Symbols and Punctuation). If you need styled or decorative alternatives, try our Fancy Text tool to generate compatible text that works in most modern interfaces.

History & usage: History and usage of the left angle bracket appears in Unicode as U+3008. It is shown as the LEFT ANGLE BRACKET, part of the CJK Symbols and Punctuation block and using the Common script. In writing and code, brackets and quotes delimit groups, parameters, or quoted text. This mark helps readers see boundaries and separate parts of a sentence, a list, or a string. In East Asian texts it serves similar roles to other quotation marks or brackets. In programming and data formats it can frame values, options, or arguments, making syntax clearer. The symbol is used with care in multilingual documents to avoid confusion with angle brackets from other systems. When present it signals the start of a nested section or a quoted segment and pairs with a closing mark in some styles. Across languages, authors rely on these delimiters to group ideas, enclose references, or mark quoted speech. The LEFT ANGLE BRACKET design remains simple: a basic angular shape that stands apart from letters. It thus supports clarity in both writing and code contexts, helping readers and machines parse text.

Copy and input: the quickest method is to copy the character here. You can also insert it by its codepoint U+3008 in many development tools or editors. Some operating systems provide a character viewer or input palette that lets you search by name or code and insert the glyph into documents.

Display and fallback: if you see an empty box (tofu) or a placeholder rectangle, the active font might not include this codepoint. Switching to a font with broader Unicode coverage or using a fallback font usually fixes the issue. On the web, ensure the page’s font stack includes a general‑purpose fallback.

Related references: browse the Categories for similar characters. When choosing a symbol, prefer the official codepoint for semantic clarity and better compatibility with search, copy, and accessibility tooling.

See our category page for related symbols.

Related confusable: view similar characters.