Fullwidth Greater-Than Sign

Choose full-width input in a Japanese IME.

Microsoft's Japanese IME separates full-width and half-width input; after switching, select the sign from the conversion candidates or IME Pad's character list. The shortcut depends on keyboard layout.

Does ＞ still mean greater than?

Yes; it compares one quantity as greater than another. Unicode compatibility normalization, called NFKC, maps it to ASCII >. This treats the forms as equivalent during that cleanup, but they are different characters before normalization.

The recognizable mathematical pair < and > first appeared in print in the algebra of English mathematician Thomas Harriot, published after his death in 1631. Their authorship is disputed: some historians credit editor Walter Warner, noting that surviving manuscripts do not show these forms; another interpretation credits Harriot. Some histories link their shape to English mathematician Robert Recorde's earlier broad Z-shaped mark for proportion, a relationship between two ratios.

Japanese text layout sets math symbols in full-width cells and controls their spacing beside Japanese text and Western numerals. The visible strokes may be narrower or wider depending on font and layout; fullwidth describes the character cell, not guaranteed ink width.