How to type Right Square Bracket
] is the ] key, in the same place on US and UK keyboards. Alt + 93 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+005D.
Right Square Bracket
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+005D
- Windows
- Alt + 93
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 93 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| HTML | ] | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+005D | RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET |
Symbols related to Right Square Bracket
These are filed under crotchet, close and bracket in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other punctuation 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 Pe, a closing bracket. It closes a matching opening character.
What Right Square Bracket 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: $\rbrack$ 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 square bracket and crotchet. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Right Square Bracket 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 Square Bracket
The standard recognises ] under another name as well: closing square bracket (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.
How Right Square Bracket 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 Square Bracket
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+005D |
| Decimal | 93 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 5D |
| UTF-16 bytes | 00 5D |
| HTML entity | ] |
| HTML numeric | ] or ] |
| CSS | \005D |
| JavaScript | \u005D |
| Python | \u005D |
| URL-encoded | %5D |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\rbrack$ |
| SVG | 005D.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 %5D, 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.