U+2039 "‹" Single Left-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark Unicode Character

Unicode Version 17.0

U+2039 "‹" Single Left-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark is a punctuation symbol commonly used in French, Italian, and other European languages to indicate the opening of a quotation or a specific cited passage, typically paired with its right-pointing counterpart (U+203A "›") to form a set of guillemets. It is designed to resemble a narrow, single arrowhead pointing to the left, and it often appears in printed texts and digital typography to enclose a short quote or to mark a term within a larger quotation, with a space usually inserted before it in French usage. This character is distinguished from the greater-than sign or other similar symbols by its specific typographic role and is part of the General Punctuation block in Unicode, where it is encoded for consistent representation across different systems and fonts.

General Properties

Code Point U+2039
Version Added 1.1
Name Single Left-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark
Unicode 1.0 Name Left Pointing Single Guillemet
Block General Punctuation
General Category Initial Punctuation
Canonical Combining Class Not Reordered
Bidirectional Class Other Neutral
Mirrored Yes
Mirrored Character "›" U+203A Single Right-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark

Encodings

HTML Decimal Encoding ‹
HTML Hex Encoding ‹
UTF-8 Encoding 0xE2 0x80 0xB9
UTF-16 Encoding 0x2039
UTF-32 Encoding 0x00002039
C/C++/Java Escape \u2039

Unicode Properties

NFC Quick Check Yes
NFD Quick Check Yes
NFKC Quick Check Yes
NFKD Quick Check Yes
Numeric Type None
Numeric Value NaN
Line Break Quotation
Script Common
Script Extensions Common
Indic Syllabic Category Other
Pattern Syntax Yes
Quotation Mark Yes
Vertical Orientation Rotated
Grapheme Base Yes
Grapheme Cluster Break Other
Word Break Other
Sentence Break Close