LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK·U+00AB

«

Character Information

Code Point
U+00AB
HEX
00AB
Unicode Plane
Basic Multilingual Plane
Category
Initial Quote

Character Representations

Click elements to copy
EncodingHexBinary
UTF8
C2 AB
11000010 10101011
UTF16 (big Endian)
00 AB
00000000 10101011
UTF16 (little Endian)
AB 00
10101011 00000000
UTF32 (big Endian)
00 00 00 AB
00000000 00000000 00000000 10101011
UTF32 (little Endian)
AB 00 00 00
10101011 00000000 00000000 00000000
HTML Entity
«
URI Encoded
%C2%AB

Description

The Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark (U+00AB) is a significant typographical character primarily utilized to enclose quotations within digital text. This character plays a crucial role in distinguishing direct speech from indirect speech or quoted material within a narrative, particularly in citation formats such as legal documents, technical writing, and academic papers. Although not extensively used in English-language texts, the Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark is more common in languages like French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. This character's versatility is highlighted across various cultural, linguistic, and technical contexts, emphasizing its importance for accurate and clear communication within digital text. The Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark can be found within the Latin-1 Supplement Unicode block (U+0080 to U+00FF), which consists of 256 characters essential for proper formatting and presentation of written content. This block was designed to expand the basic Latin character set, accommodating additional symbols like the Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark, thereby enhancing the readability and overall appearance of text documents. In summary, the Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark (U+00AB) is a vital typographical character that serves to enclose quotations within digital text, particularly in various cultural, linguistic, and technical contexts. Its usage demonstrates its importance for accurate and clear communication in digital text documents.

How to type the « symbol on Windows

Hold Alt and type 0171 on the numpad. Or use Character Map.

  1. Step 1: Determine the UTF-8 encoding bit layout

    The character « has the Unicode code point U+00AB. In UTF-8, it is encoded using 2 bytes because its codepoint is in the range of 0x0080 to 0x07ff.

    Therefore we know that the UTF-8 encoding will be done over 11 bits within the final 16 bits and that it will have the format: 110xxxxx 10xxxxxx
    Where the x are the payload bits.

    UTF-8 Encoding bit layout by codepoint range
    Codepoint RangeBytesBit patternPayload length
    U+0000 - U+007F10xxxxxxx7 bits
    U+0080 - U+07FF2110xxxxx 10xxxxxx11 bits
    U+0800 - U+FFFF31110xxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx16 bits
    U+10000 - U+10FFFF411110xxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx21 bits
  2. Step 2: Obtain the payload bits:

    Convert the hexadecimal code point U+00AB to binary: 10101011. Those are the payload bits.

  3. Step 3: Fill in the bits to match the bit pattern:

    Obtain the final bytes by arranging the paylod bits to match the bit layout:
    11000010 10101011