How to type Less-Than Sign
< is Shift + ,, in the same place on US and UK keyboards. Alt + 60 on the numeric keypad produces it on any Windows layout, which is the way in when the keyboard in front of you has no key for it, and < writes it in HTML. Its codepoint is U+003C.
Less-Than Sign
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+003C
- Windows
- Alt + 60
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 60 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| HTML | < | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+003C | LESS-THAN SIGN |
Symbols related to Less-Than Sign
These are filed under tag, less-than and open in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other math symbols
< lives in the Basic Latin block (U+0000-U+007F), the original ASCII set: the letters, digits and punctuation printed on a US keyboard. Within Unicode it is classified as Sm, a mathematical symbol. Software may lay it out with the spacing an operator expects.
What Less-Than Sign is used for
In mathematical notation < is a relation: it makes a claim about the two things either side of it, which is true or false rather than a value to work out. TeX gives a relation more space than an operator, and breaks a long line at one in preference to breaking at an operator. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\less$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
Unicode publishes a second list of names for < in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and they are open and tag. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Less-Than Sign is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them as well as the Unicode name.
What < gets confused with
Unicode's own confusables table, the one used to catch lookalike domain names, groups < with ‹ (U+2039, Single Left-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark). They are separate characters that render close enough to be mistaken for one another, so a search or a string comparison will separate them where your eye will not. If Less-Than Sign is not matching where you expect it to, one of these is the usual reason.
What Unicode says about Less-Than Sign
Unicode annotates < directly. Against U+003C the code chart carries the note “Paired with 003E for ASCII-based angle bracket markup conventions”. That is the standard saying what the character is for, rather than an inference from its name.
The code chart points from < to modifier letter left arrowhead (U+02C2), single left-pointing angle quotation mark (U+2039), left-pointing angle bracket (U+2329), mathematical left angle bracket (U+27E8) and left angle bracket (U+3008). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Less-Than Sign looks nearly right but not quite.
How Less-Than Sign behaves in software
< takes one column in a terminal. It carries no direction of its own, so in a line that mixes English with Arabic or Hebrew it takes the direction of the text around it rather than forcing one. It is a mirrored character: in right-to-left text it is drawn reversed, so it keeps pointing at what it pointed at.
Every way to write Less-Than Sign
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+003C |
| Decimal | 60 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 3C |
| UTF-16 bytes | 00 3C |
| HTML entity | < |
| HTML numeric | < or < |
| CSS | \003C |
| JavaScript | \u003C |
| Python | \u003C |
| URL-encoded | %3C |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\less$ |
| SVG | 003C.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If < needs escaping
< is one byte in ASCII, in UTF-8 and in every code page in common use, so it never arrives corrupted. Its problem is the opposite one: it means something to the software reading it. In HTML it can be written <, in a URL it is %3C, and inside a CSV field, a shell command or a regular expression it has to be quoted or escaped rather than typed plainly. That is also why < is the character people substitute when the one they wanted will not type.