Encoding
Representations of various kinds of brackets in ASCII, Unicode and HTML are given below.
| Usage | Unicode | SGML/HTML/XML entities | Sample | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| General purpose | U+0028 | Left parenthesis | ( &lparen; | (parenthesis) |
| U+0029 | Right parenthesis | ) &rparen; | ||
| U+005B | Left square bracket | [ | ||
| U+005D | Right square bracket | ] | ||
| Technical/mathematical (common) |
U+003C | Less-than sign | < < | |
| U+003E | Greater-than sign | > > | ||
| U+007B | Left curly bracket | { | {round, square, curly} | |
| U+007D | Right curly bracket | } | ||
| Technical/mathematical (specialized) |
U+2308 | Left ceiling | ᄴ | ⌈ceiling⌉ |
| U+2309 | Right ceiling | ᄵ | ||
| U+230A | Left floor | ᄶ | ⌊floor⌋ | |
| U+230B | Right floor | ᄷ | ||
| U+27E8 | Mathematical left angle bracket | ⟨ ⟨* | ⟨a, b⟩ | |
| U+27E9 | Mathematical right angle bracket | ⟩ ⟩* | ||
| Quotation (halfwidth East-Asian texts) |
U+2329 | Left pointing angle bracket | 〈 ⟨* | 〈deprecated〉 |
| U+232A | Right pointing angle bracket | 〉 ⟩* | ||
| U+FF62 | Halfwidth left corner bracket | ｢ | ｢ｶﾀｶﾅ｣ | |
| U+FF63 | Halfwidth right corner angle bracket | ｣ | ||
| Quotation (fullwidth East-Asian texts) |
U+3008 | Left angle bracket | 〈 | 〈한〉 |
| U+3009 | Right angle bracket | 〉 | ||
| U+300A | Left double angle bracket | 《 | 《한한》 | |
| U+300B | Right double angle bracket | 》 | ||
| U+300C | Left corner bracket | 「 | 「白八櫨」 | |
| U+300D | Right corner bracket | 」 | ||
| U+300E | Left corner bracket | 『 | 『カタカナ』 | |
| U+300F | Right corner bracket | 』 | ||
| U+3010 | Left thick square bracket | 【 | 【ひらがな】 | |
| U+3011 | Right thick square bracket | 】 | ||
| General purpose (fullwidth East-Asian) |
U+FF08 | Fullwidth left parenthesis | （ | （Ｗｉｋｉ） |
| U+FF09 | Fullwidth right parenthesis | ） | ||
| U+FF3B | Fullwidth left square bracket | ［ | ［ｓｉｃ］ | |
| U+FF3D | Fullwidth right square bracket | ］ | ||
| Technical/mathematical (fullwidth East-Asian) |
U+FF1C | Fullwidth less-than sign | ＜ | ＜ＨＴＭＬ＞ |
| U+FF1E | Fullwidth greater-than sign | ＞ | ||
| U+FF5B | Fullwidth left curly bracket | ｛ | ｛１、２｝ | |
| U+FF5D | Fullwidth right curly bracket | ｝ | ||
*⟨ and ⟩ were tied to the deprecated symbols U+2329 and U+232A in HTML4 and MathML2, but are being migrated to U+27E8 and U+27E9 for HTML5 and MathML3.
Braces (curly brackets) first became part of a character set with the 8-bit code of the IBM 7030 Stretch.
The angle brackets or chevrons at U+27E8 and U+27E9 are for mathematical use and Western languages, while U+3008 and U+3009 are for East Asian languages. The chevrons at U+2329 and U+232A are deprecated in favour of the U+3008 and U+3009 East Asian angle brackets. Unicode discourages their use for mathematics and in Western texts because they are canonically equivalent to the CJK code points U+300x and thus likely to render as double-width symbols. The less-than and greater-than symbols are often used as replacements for chevrons.
These various bracket characters are frequently used in many computer languages as operators or for other syntax markup. The more common uses follow.