Unicode Explained

nym for mathematical right angle bracket U+27E9) would theoretically be most ade-

quate for use as an angular bracket, U+2329 is usually a much more practical choice.

Yet, the Unicode standard says about U+2329 and the right-pointing angle bracket

U+232A that they are “discouraged for mathematical use because of their canonical

equivalence to CJK punctuation.” They have indeed been defined as canonical equiv-

alent to U+3008 and U+3009, though displayed as visually different. The Unicode

names of these characters, “left angle bracket” and “right angle bracket” are misleading,

since they give no hint of their nature. They are meant for use in East Asian writing

along with Chinese-Japanese-Korean ideographs. Consequently, they have some sur-

prising properties.

A glyph for the left angle bracket 〈 (U+3008) has to suit its use with ideographs

designed to fit into a square, such as 懌. Therefore, the left-pointing angle bracket

〈 (U+2329) is much more suitable, for example, for mathematical texts in English.

However, the canonical equivalence means that software conforming to the Unicode

standard may effectively treat them as identical, and mapping to any Unicode normal-

ization form will replace U+2329 with U+3008.

Thus, if you really need angular brackets (in mathematics, for example):

1. Use the mathematical brackets U+27E8 and U+27E9, if you can be reasonably sure

that these rarely available characters ...