What ⎨ means
It forms the waist of a tall left brace.
The pieces are stacked vertically: at the top, ⎨ in the middle and at the bottom. Straight extensions can go above and below the middle to increase the height. The finished brace groups several lines, for example equations to solve together or the different cases in a function definition.
Building a brace from parts keeps the strokes at a consistent thickness instead of distorting one character by stretching it. These are compatibility characters for displaying mathematical layouts, not the intended way to store a formula's structure. For a formula you are editing, use the equation editor's brace; typing these pieces next to one another does not assemble a tall brace.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
4
Worth knowing
- Braces assembled from parts predate computers: the French Encyclopédie, published in 1751–1780, shows large braces built this way.
More like this
9
How to type or find ⎨
- Search it as
- left curly brace · brace middle piece · tall brace · bracket piece
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⎨\23A8Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.