Left Square Bracket Symbol

A symbol from the Bracket Symbols collection. Click the symbol or the button below to copy.

Symbol: [
Unicode: U+005B
HTML entity: [
Category: Bracket Symbols

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7 of 56 in the bracket symbols collection

About the left square bracket symbol

The glyph is a vertical line with a short horizontal stroke extending to the right from both its top and bottom, forming an open, squared-off shape that faces left. It serves as the opening member of a paired punctuation mark, used in formal writing to enclose supplementary or editorial material, such as clarifications within quoted text, phonetic transcriptions, or mathematical intervals. In computing and programming, it frequently marks the beginning of an array, list, or block of code.

As part of the Basic Latin block, this character is a standard fixture on keyboards and in text encoding, appearing in contexts ranging from academic citations to source code. Its counterpart, the right square bracket, closes the enclosure.

How to type Left Square Bracket

Native keyboard shortcuts for each operating system — derived from the codepoint, so the steps below are always accurate.

Windows

2 options

Hold Alt and type 0091 on the numeric keypad, then release Alt.
Or, in Word: type 005B then press Alt + X.

Numeric keypad required (laptops: enable Num Lock or use Fn).

macOS

2 options

Enable “Unicode Hex Input” in System Settings → Keyboard, then hold Option and type 005B.
Or: Control + Command + Space opens the Character Viewer — search by name.