Bracket Symbols
Copy any bracket symbol in one click: the keyboard brackets ( ) [ ] { }, maths angle brackets ⟨ ⟩, East Asian brackets 「 」 【 】 〔 〕 and decorative ornate brackets. Every bracket comes as a matching opening and closing pair.
Click any symbol to copy it. 93 symbols
Keyboard brackets
8Angle and mathematical brackets
20East Asian brackets
18Full-width and small brackets
14Ornamental and heavy brackets
14Brackets as pieces for tall formulas
19These fragments stack vertically to draw a bracket several lines high, as in a matrix. They only line up in a monospaced font.
Bracket names: parentheses, square, curly and angle
English has several names for each pair, and they differ between countries. In American usage, ( ) are parentheses, [ ] are brackets and { } are braces. British English calls ( ) round brackets or simply brackets, [ ] square brackets and { } curly brackets. All three are on the standard keyboard; see keyboard symbol names for the rest of the row.
Angle brackets are the trickiest. In maths and quantum physics, ⟨ ⟩ (U+27E8 and U+27E9) enclose inner products and bra-ket notation. The keyboard less-than and greater-than signs < > look similar but are comparison operators; use them for HTML tags and code, not for typography.
Japanese and Chinese brackets
「 」 are the everyday quotation marks of Japanese, and 『 』 mark a quotation inside a quotation or a book title. 【 】, called lenticular brackets, are used for headings and labels such as 【Sale】. Chinese typesetting uses 《 》 for titles of books and films. These brackets are full-width, so they take the space of one ideograph; see our Japanese symbols and Chinese symbols collections for the matching punctuation.
Brackets in HTML and code
The keyboard brackets need no escaping in HTML text, except that < must be written as < so the browser does not read it as a tag. Named entities exist for the others: ( ( , [ [ , { { , and ⟨ / ⟩ for ⟨ ⟩. East Asian brackets have no names, so use numeric references such as 「 for 「.
In names and bios, decorative brackets frame a word: 【VIP】 or 『Luna』. They pair well with the styles in the fancy text generator and the nickname generator. Screen readers announce each bracket by name, so keep them to one pair per name.
Frequently asked questions
What are the four types of brackets?
Round brackets or parentheses ( ), square brackets [ ], curly brackets or braces { } and angle brackets ⟨ ⟩. The first three are on every keyboard; angle brackets come from the maths block of Unicode.
How do I type curly brackets?
On a US keyboard, press Shift and the [ key for { and Shift and the ] key for }. On many European layouts they sit on AltGr + 7 and AltGr + 0.
What are 【 】 brackets called?
【 】 are black lenticular brackets (U+3010 and U+3011). They come from Chinese and Japanese typography, where they frame headings and labels.
Is ⟨ the same as the less-than sign?
No. ⟨ is the mathematical left angle bracket (U+27E8), while < is the less-than sign used for comparisons and HTML tags. They look alike but mean different things.