The Right Single Angle Quote (›): Meaning, Usage, and Typography Guide
The right single angle quote (›) is a typographical symbol primarily used to indicate secondary or nested quotations in several European languages. In modern digital design, it is most commonly recognized as a breadcrumb separator or an arrow icon indicating navigation, such as moving to the next page or clicking a link.
Officially named the Single Right-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark, this character sits at Unicode U+203A within the General Punctuation block. It belongs to the guillemet family, a set of punctuation marks named after the 16th-century French punchcutter Guillaume Le Bé. While English typography relies heavily on standard curly or straight quotation marks, languages like Swiss German and Swedish use single angle quotes to neatly enclose quotes within quotes.
Beyond traditional publishing, the › symbol has found massive popularity in modern user interface (UI) design. Web developers frequently use it to build breadcrumb trails (for example: Home › Electronics › Smartphones) because it provides a clean, elegant visual hierarchy. It guides the user's eye smoothly across the screen without the harsh, aggressive geometry of a mathematical greater-than sign. On social media, newsletters, and blogs, writers often drop it at the end of a teaser paragraph to prompt readers to swipe right, click a link, or read the rest of the article.
Typing the right single angle quote depends on your operating system and keyboard layout. On a Mac, press Shift + Option + Right Arrow. Windows users can hold down the Alt key and type 0155 on the numeric keypad to insert it. On mobile devices, you can usually find it by long-pressing the standard quotation mark or greater-than key on your virtual keyboard. If you are coding a website, use the HTML entity › to ensure the symbol renders perfectly across all browsers and devices.
It is easy to confuse › with the standard greater-than sign (>), but they serve entirely different purposes. The greater-than sign (U+003E) is strictly for mathematics and programming, appearing larger, sharper, and vertically centered. The right single angle quote's direct sibling is the left single angle quote (‹, U+2039), and its double counterpart is the right-pointing double angle quotation mark (», U+00BB), which handles primary quotes in many major languages.