What ⎜ means
⎜ is the left parenthesis extension. Unicode classifies it as a mathematical symbol and files it in the Miscellaneous Technical block; this site shelves it under Maths.
Its appearance depends on the font and text styling.
How it is encoded
⎜ is a single code point, U239C. In HTML that is ⎜, and in CSS \239C.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
4
Right Parenthesis Extension
The mirror half of the same stacking piece; in math fonts the two are easy to swap when building tall brackets.
Left Square Bracket Extension
The same stacking piece drawn square; in math fonts the two look nearly identical at a glance.
Integral Extension
The stacked piece used to build tall integral signs; it resembles this glyph in math rendering.
CJK Unified Ideograph-4E28
CJK Vertical Stroke: a plain vertical line from Han characters that can stand in for the bar in text or fonts without the math glyph.
Related characters
2
Questions people ask
1Why does ⎜ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
More like this
8
Collections with ⎜
1
How to type or find ⎜
- Search it as
- tall parenthesis piece · math parenthesis extension · multiline parenthesis · parenthesis middle segment · left bracket extension
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
Windows (Word)
Windows
HTML
⎜CSS
\239CCodes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⎜
HTML hex
⎜
CSS content
content: "\239C";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%8E%9C
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.