Unicode character Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark
About this character
The character « is known as Unicode character Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark and carries the Unicode code point U+00AB, which is 171 in decimal. It belongs to the Latin-1 Supplement block (U+0080–U+00FF), which gathers the accented letters of Western European languages along with the punctuation and symbols inherited from ISO 8859-1.
In memory, « takes 2 bytes in UTF-8 (0xC2 0xAB) and 1 in UTF-16 (0x00AB). That difference is why badly configured forms or databases garble this character: they assume one byte per character.
How to type «
| System | What to do |
|---|---|
| Windows | On Windows, hold Alt and type 171 on the numeric keypad. In Word or WordPad, type 00AB and press Alt + X to turn the code into the character. |
| macOS | On a Mac using the ABC/US layout, ⌥ + \ produces this character directly. |
| Linux | On Linux (GTK), type Ctrl + ⇧ + U, 00AB then press Enter. |
| HTML / Web | In an HTML page, write «. Use \00AB in CSS, \u00AB in JavaScript and \u00AB in Python. |
| On this site | The simplest route is the Copy button above: the character goes straight to your clipboard, ready to paste anywhere. |
Keyboards that include «
This character sits directly on the following ClavierVirtuel layouts, where you can click it with the mouse:
Codes and encodings
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Code point | U+00AB |
| Unicode block | Latin-1 Supplement (U+0080–U+00FF) |
| Decimal | 171 |
| Hexadecimal | 0x00AB |
| Octal | 0253 |
| Binary | 10101011 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 0xC2 0xAB |
| UTF-16 units | 0x00AB |
| Named HTML entity | « |
| Decimal HTML entity | « |
| Hex HTML entity | « |
| CSS escape | \00AB |
| JavaScript escape | \u00AB |
| Python escape | \u00AB |
| URL encoding | %C2%AB |
Frequently asked questions
What is the Unicode code for «?
Its code point is U+00AB, which is 171 in decimal and 0253 in octal. In HTML you can write it as « or «.
Why does « show up as a box or a question mark?
An empty box means the font has no glyph for U+00AB. The character is still in the text: switching to a font that covers the block (Noto, DejaVu or Segoe UI Symbol) makes it appear.
Can I use « in a filename, a URL or a password?
In a URL it must be encoded as %C2%AB. Modern filesystems accept it, though it is still risky when moving files between systems. For passwords, some forms reject non-ASCII characters outright.