Bracket Symbols

Japanese 【 】「 」『 』, angle 《 》〈 〉, corner ⌜ ⌝, curly ⦃ ⦄ and ornamental ❨ ❩ ❮ ❯ pairs, alongside the fullwidth （ ） ［ ］ forms. Click one to take it — brackets come in pairs, so grab the opening and closing character separately.

Copy and Paste Bracket Symbols

The three pairs on your keyboard are here, but they are not why anyone comes to a page like this. The other hundred-odd are: the Japanese lenticular and corner brackets, the angle brackets, the ornamental pairs, the fullwidth versions that sit at the same width as CJK characters, and the half brackets that mark an editorial insertion. Every one is a pair, so take the opening and closing character separately.

What Are Bracket Symbols?

Bracket symbols are Unicode punctuation characters that open and close. Unicode classes them as Ps and Pe — open and close punctuation — which is why a text editor can match them automatically and why a well-behaved renderer will mirror them in right-to-left text. The CJK ones live in U+3008 to U+301B, the ornamental pairs in Dingbats around U+2768, and the fullwidth forms up at U+FF08.

The reason the Japanese ones turn up in profile names and captions far outside Japan is width. 【 and 】 occupy a full character cell where [ occupies about half of one, so a name wrapped in them looks deliberately spaced rather than cramped.

How to Use Bracket Symbols

Copying Bracket Symbols

Click any character in the grid and it lands on your clipboard bare. Brackets are the one category where you almost always need two clicks — the opening and closing halves are separate characters, not a single unit.

Pasting Bracket Symbols Into Apps

Ctrl+V on Windows and Linux, Cmd+V on Mac, long-press and Paste on a phone. They work in a display name, a contact entry, a caption, a chat message or a document.

Bracket Symbols and Text Direction

Because Unicode marks these as paired punctuation, a system rendering Arabic or Hebrew will flip them so the opening bracket still faces into the text. That is correct behaviour rather than a bug, and it is why you should copy a real bracket rather than draw one out of slashes and dashes.

Types of Bracket Symbols

Japanese Bracket Symbols

【 】 are the lenticular brackets, the heaviest and most visible pair here and the reason most people arrive. 〖 〗 is the white-filled version, 〔 〕 the tortoise-shell pair, and 〘 〙 its white form. 「 」 and 『 』 are the corner brackets Japanese uses where English uses quotation marks — single for speech, double for a quote inside a quote or for a title.

Angle Bracket Symbols

《 》 and 〈 〉 are the CJK angle brackets, used for titles of works. ⟨ ⟩ and ⟪ ⟫ are their mathematical counterparts, narrower and meant for notation rather than prose. ❮ ❯ and ❰ ❱ are the ornamental versions, which is what most people mean by an arrow bracket.

Square and Curly Bracket Symbols

[ ] and { } are the keyboard pairs. ［ ］ and ｛ ｝ are their fullwidth twins — same shapes, one full cell wide. ⟦ ⟧ are the white square brackets used for semantic notation, ⦃ ⦄ the white curly pair, and ⁅ ⁆ the quilled variants. ⌈ ⌉ and ⌊ ⌋ are ceiling and floor, which is where the half-height look comes from.

Corner and Half Bracket Symbols

⸢ ⸣ and ⸤ ⸥ are half brackets — scholars use them to mark text that has been supplied or reconstructed rather than read from the source. ⌜ ⌝ and ⌞ ⌟ are their quine-corner equivalents from logic, and ｢ ｣ are the halfwidth Japanese corners.

Ornamental Bracket Symbols

❨ ❩ ❪ ❫ ❬ ❭ ❲ ❳ ❴ ❵ come from a Dingbats font rather than from any writing system — they are decorative parentheses drawn at various weights. ﴾ ﴿ are the ornate parentheses used around Quranic verse numbers, and ⸜ ⸝ ⸌ ⸍ are the raised and slanted editorial pairs.

Vertical Bracket Symbols

︵ ︶ ︷ ︸ ︿ ﹀ ﹁ ﹂ are presentation forms for vertical writing — the same brackets rotated for text that runs top to bottom. In horizontal text they read as wide arcs and caps, which is why they turn up in decorative usernames far from their intended purpose.

Best Uses for Bracket Symbols

Bracket Symbols in Names and Contacts

A name wrapped in 【 】 or 「 」 reads as labelled rather than shouted, which is why the pattern is everywhere in gaming handles, streaming titles and phone contact lists. The fullwidth pairs do the same job with more air around the text.

Bracket Symbols in Titles and Quotations

If you are writing about a Japanese or Chinese work, 《 》 is the correct mark for its title and 「 」 for quoted speech. Using an English quotation mark there is not wrong exactly, but it reads as translated rather than written.

Bracket Symbols in Notes and Editing

⸢ ⸣ for a reconstructed reading, [ ] for an editorial insertion in a quotation, ⟦ ⟧ for a semantic gloss. These conventions predate computers and the characters exist so that a note keeps its meaning when it is copied out of the document it was written in.

Bracket Symbols Unicode Names and Codes

The names describe the shape rather than the language: 【 is U+3010 Left Black Lenticular Bracket, 「 is U+300C Left Corner Bracket, 《 is U+300A Left Double Angle Bracket, ❨ is U+2768 Medium Left Parenthesis Ornament. Every tile in the grid shows the code point beside it.

Worth knowing if you are working from an older character table: U+2329 and U+232A are a deprecated pair of angle brackets that Unicode treats as equivalent to 〈 U+3008 and 〉 U+3009. Use the U+3008 pair. On Windows, hold Alt and type the decimal value on the numeric keypad — 12304 for 【, 12300 for 「, 12298 for 《. On Linux, Ctrl+Shift+U then 3010 and Enter; on a Mac, the Character Viewer at Ctrl+Cmd+Space.

Frequently Asked Questions About Bracket Symbols

What are the Japanese brackets called?

【 】 are lenticular brackets, 「 」 and 『 』 are corner brackets, 〔 〕 are tortoise-shell brackets and 《 》 are double angle brackets. Japanese uses the corner pair where English uses quotation marks, and the lenticular pair for emphasis in headings.

Why do these brackets look wider than the ones on my keyboard?

Because they are. CJK punctuation is designed to occupy a full character cell so it lines up with Chinese, Japanese and Korean text, which is fixed-width. In an English sentence that extra room is exactly what makes 【 look deliberate where [ looks tight — and it is why the fullwidth ［ exists alongside the ordinary one.

What is a half bracket for?

⸢ ⸣ mark text an editor has supplied rather than found — a reconstructed word in a damaged manuscript, or a reading that is probable but not certain. ⌜ ⌝ do a related job in logic, where they quote an expression rather than use it.

Are the plain brackets on this page different from my keyboard ones?

No. ( ), [ ] and { } are the same characters your keyboard types, and they are here so the collection is complete rather than because you need to copy them. The fullwidth versions next to them are genuinely different characters.

How do I type a bracket symbol without copying it?

Alt and the decimal value on a Windows numeric keypad: 12304 for 【, 12300 for 「, 12298 for 《. There is no short Alt code for any of them — the original PC character set carried only the three keyboard pairs — and no phone keyboard has them, so copying is the practical route on mobile.

Why does a bracket show as a box on someone else's device?

Their font has no glyph for it. The Japanese and angle brackets are supported almost everywhere because CJK fonts are widespread. The vertical presentation forms ︵ ︷ ﹁, the quilled ⁅ ⁆ and the tick-cornered square brackets are the ones most likely to be missing.

Related Collections for Bracket Symbols

For enclosing a character rather than a phrase — a circled or boxed letter — see the number symbols, which hold the circled and bracketed digits. The angle brackets here are punctuation rather than direction; for the pointing kind see arrow symbols, and for the mathematical relations that look similar, math symbols. Everything else is on the symbol collections index.