What ⎛ means
It is the upper segment of a tall left parenthesis. In mathematical typesetting, this piece starts a delimiter around an expression spanning several lines; ⎜ extends it through the middle, and ⎝ closes it below.
Unicode’s math guidance treats these segments as compatibility pieces: useful for preserving older display data, but not the preferred way to store ordinary mathematical text. They reflect font systems that assembled tall symbols from fixed-size glyphs.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions 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.
How to type ⎛
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 239B, then Alt+X to get ⎛.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “left parenthesis upper hook”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 239b, then Enter or Space.
HTML
⎛CSS
\239BWindows Alt+X
To type the upper piece of a tall parenthesis, enter 239B and press Alt+X in a Windows app that supports Unicode hex input.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⎛
HTML hex
⎛
CSS content
content: "\239B";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%8E%9B
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.