Left Double Quotation Mark
Part of Punctuation and Typography Marks
On Windows, hold Alt and type 0147 on the numeric keypad to insert left double quotation mark.
- Alt code
- Alt+0147
- HTML entity
- “
- Unicode
- U+201C
About this symbol
Quotation marks grew from marks in the margins of fifteenth-century manuscripts, which flagged lines quoted from other writers. In the seventeenth century British printers began putting the marks at the start and end of the quotation itself.
Typesetters nickname the curly pair 66 and 99 after their shapes: “ opens a quotation and ” closes it. American English uses double marks first, while British English more often starts with single ones.
Unicode facts
- Official name
- LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK
- Also called
- Double turned comma quotation mark
- Type
- Opening quotation mark
- Unicode block
- General Punctuation
- Unicode group
- Quotation marks and apostrophe
- Added in
- Unicode 1.1 (1993)
- Unicode notes
- This is the preferred character (as opposed to 201F)
Click the symbol or any value at the top of the page to copy it. See the full Punctuation and Typography Marks chart for related characters.