How to type Right Parenthesis
) is Shift + 0, in the same place on US and UK keyboards. Alt + 41 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+0029.
Right Parenthesis
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+0029
- Windows
- Alt + 41
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 41 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| HTML | ) | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+0029 | RIGHT PARENTHESIS |
Symbols related to Right Parenthesis
These are filed under close and bracket in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other punctuation symbols
Right Parenthesis is not the only name it goes by: people look for ) as bracket too, and the search box on this site matches that as readily as the Unicode name.
) 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 Pe, a closing bracket. It closes a matching opening character.
What Right Parenthesis is used for
In mathematical notation ) is a closing delimiter: it pairs with an opening partner and grows to the height of whatever the pair encloses. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\rparen$ 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 close parenthesis, bracket, paren and parens. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Right Parenthesis is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them as well as the Unicode name.
What Unicode says about Right Parenthesis
The standard recognises ) under another name as well: closing parenthesis (1.0). That is a formal alias, not a nickname, which is why it turns up in other people's documentation for the same codepoint.
Unicode annotates ) directly. Against U+0029 the code chart carries the note “See discussion on semantics of paired bracketing characters”. That is the standard saying what the character is for, rather than an inference from its name.
How Right Parenthesis 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 Right Parenthesis
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+0029 |
| Decimal | 41 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 29 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 00 29 |
| HTML entity | ) |
| HTML numeric | ) or ) |
| CSS | \0029 |
| JavaScript | \u0029 |
| Python | \u0029 |
| URL-encoded | %29 |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\rparen$ |
| SVG | 0029.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 %29, 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.