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Glyph for U+226A
Source: Noto Sans Math

U+226A Much Less-Than

U+226A was added in Unicode version 1.1 in 1993. It belongs to the block U+2200 to U+22FF Mathematical Operators in the U+0000 to U+FFFF Basic Multilingual Plane.

This character is a Math Symbol and is commonly used, that is, in no specific script.

The glyph is not a composition. Its width in East Asian texts is determined by its context. It can be displayed wide or narrow. In bidirectional text it acts as Other Neutral. When changing direction it is mirrored into Glyph for U+226B Much Greater-Than. If its East Asian Width is “narrow”, U+226A forms a word with similar characters, which prevents a line break inside it. Otherwise it allows line breaks around it, except in some numeric contexts. The glyph can be confused with one other glyph.

The CLDR project calls this character “much less-than” for use in screen reading software. It assigns these additional labels, e.g. for search in emoji pickers: inequality, mathematics.

The Wikipedia has the following information about this codepoint:

In mathematics, an inequality is a relation which makes a non-equal comparison between two numbers or other mathematical expressions. It is used most often to compare two numbers on the number line by their size. There are several different notations used to represent different kinds of inequalities:

  • The notation a < b means that a is less than b.
  • The notation a > b means that a is greater than b.

In either case, a is not equal to b. These relations are known as strict inequalities, meaning that a is strictly less than or strictly greater than b. Equality is excluded.

In contrast to strict inequalities, there are two types of inequality relations that are not strict:

  • The notation ab or ab means that a is less than or equal to b (or, equivalently, at most b, or not greater than b).
  • The notation ab or ab means that a is greater than or equal to b (or, equivalently, at least b, or not less than b).

The relation not greater than can also be represented by ab, the symbol for "greater than" bisected by a slash, "not". The same is true for not less than and ab.

The notation ab means that a is not equal to b; this inequation sometimes is considered a form of strict inequality. It does not say that one is greater than the other; it does not even require a and b to be member of an ordered set.

In engineering sciences, less formal use of the notation is to state that one quantity is "much greater" than another, normally by several orders of magnitude.

  • The notation ab means that a is much less than b.
  • The notation ab means that a is much greater than b.

This implies that the lesser value can be neglected with little effect on the accuracy of an approximation (such as the case of ultrarelativistic limit in physics).

In all of the cases above, any two symbols mirroring each other are symmetrical; a < b and b > a are equivalent, etc.

Representations

System Representation
8810
UTF-8 E2 89 AA
UTF-16 22 6A
UTF-32 00 00 22 6A
URL-Quoted %E2%89%AA
HTML hex reference &#x226A;
Wrong windows-1252 Mojibake ≪
HTML named entity &Lt;
HTML named entity &NestedLessLess;
HTML named entity &ll;
Encoding: EUC-KR (hex bytes) A1 EC
Encoding: JIS0208 (hex bytes) A2 E3
LATEX \ll
Adobe Glyph List muchless
digraph <*

Related Characters

Confusables

Elsewhere

Complete Record

Property Value
Age (age) 1.1 (1993)
Unicode Name (na) MUCH LESS-THAN
Unicode 1 Name (na1) MUCH LESS THAN
Block (blk) Mathematical Operators
General Category (gc) Math Symbol
Script (sc) Common
Bidirectional Category (bc) Other Neutral
Combining Class (ccc) Not Reordered
Decomposition Type (dt) none
Decomposition Mapping (dm) Glyph for U+226A Much Less-Than
Lowercase (Lower)
Simple Lowercase Mapping (slc) Glyph for U+226A Much Less-Than
Lowercase Mapping (lc) Glyph for U+226A Much Less-Than
Uppercase (Upper)
Simple Uppercase Mapping (suc) Glyph for U+226A Much Less-Than
Uppercase Mapping (uc) Glyph for U+226A Much Less-Than
Simple Titlecase Mapping (stc) Glyph for U+226A Much Less-Than
Titlecase Mapping (tc) Glyph for U+226A Much Less-Than
Case Folding (cf) Glyph for U+226A Much Less-Than
ASCII Hex Digit (AHex)
Alphabetic (Alpha)
Bidi Control (Bidi_C)
Bidi Mirrored (Bidi_M)
Composition Exclusion (CE)
Case Ignorable (CI)
Changes When Casefolded (CWCF)
Changes When Casemapped (CWCM)
Changes When NFKC Casefolded (CWKCF)
Changes When Lowercased (CWL)
Changes When Titlecased (CWT)
Changes When Uppercased (CWU)
Cased (Cased)
Full Composition Exclusion (Comp_Ex)
Default Ignorable Code Point (DI)
Dash (Dash)
Deprecated (Dep)
Diacritic (Dia)
Emoji Modifier Base (EBase)
Emoji Component (EComp)
Emoji Modifier (EMod)
Emoji Presentation (EPres)
Emoji (Emoji)
Extender (Ext)
Extended Pictographic (ExtPict)
FC NFKC Closure (FC_NFKC) Glyph for U+226A Much Less-Than
Grapheme Cluster Break (GCB) Any
Grapheme Base (Gr_Base)
Grapheme Extend (Gr_Ext)
Grapheme Link (Gr_Link)
Hex Digit (Hex)
Hyphen (Hyphen)
ID Continue (IDC)
ID Start (IDS)
IDS Binary Operator (IDSB)
IDS Trinary Operator and (IDST)
IDSU (IDSU) 0
ID_Compat_Math_Continue (ID_Compat_Math_Continue) 0
ID_Compat_Math_Start (ID_Compat_Math_Start) 0
Ideographic (Ideo)
InCB (InCB) None
Indic Mantra Category (InMC)
Indic Positional Category (InPC) NA
Indic Syllabic Category (InSC) Other
Jamo Short Name (JSN)
Join Control (Join_C)
Logical Order Exception (LOE)
Math (Math)
Noncharacter Code Point (NChar)
NFC Quick Check (NFC_QC) Yes
NFD Quick Check (NFD_QC) Yes
NFKC Casefold (NFKC_CF) Glyph for U+226A Much Less-Than
NFKC Quick Check (NFKC_QC) Yes
NFKC_SCF (NFKC_SCF) Glyph for U+226A Much Less-Than
NFKD Quick Check (NFKD_QC) Yes
Other Alphabetic (OAlpha)
Other Default Ignorable Code Point (ODI)
Other Grapheme Extend (OGr_Ext)
Other ID Continue (OIDC)
Other ID Start (OIDS)
Other Lowercase (OLower)
Other Math (OMath)
Other Uppercase (OUpper)
Prepended Concatenation Mark (PCM)
Pattern Syntax (Pat_Syn)
Pattern White Space (Pat_WS)
Quotation Mark (QMark)
Regional Indicator (RI)
Radical (Radical)
Sentence Break (SB) Other
Soft Dotted (SD)
Sentence Terminal (STerm)
Terminal Punctuation (Term)
Unified Ideograph (UIdeo)
Variation Selector (VS)
Word Break (WB) Other
White Space (WSpace)
XID Continue (XIDC)
XID Start (XIDS)
Expands On NFC (XO_NFC)
Expands On NFD (XO_NFD)
Expands On NFKC (XO_NFKC)
Expands On NFKD (XO_NFKD)
Bidi Mirrored Glyph (bmg) Glyph for U+226B Much Greater-Than
Bidi Paired Bracket (bpb) Glyph for U+226A Much Less-Than
Bidi Paired Bracket Type (bpt) None
East Asian Width (ea) ambiguous
Hangul Syllable Type (hst) Not Applicable
ISO 10646 Comment (isc)
Joining Group (jg) No_Joining_Group
Joining Type (jt) Non Joining
Line Break (lb) Ambiguous (Alphabetic or Ideographic)
Numeric Type (nt) none
Numeric Value (nv) not a number
Simple Case Folding (scf) Glyph for U+226A Much Less-Than
Script Extension (scx)
Vertical Orientation (vo) R