what is the name of this symbol: < >

[Teresa N Blaurock]

I have been calling < and > carets. Is that correct?

Sorry to be so basic, but a switch to Mozilla Firefox messed up my bookmarked favorites and a folder I'd kept of computer websites.

[JKing]

Those are greater than and less than symbols. A ^ is a caret.

[Teresa N Blaurock]

OK, makes sense,

And when they enclose html expressions? The same?

[JKing]

When they enclose an html expression the whole thing is considered to be a tag.

[Stwange]

I think the character themselves are called angle-brackets.

[Teresa N Blaurock]

Both correct, apparently

An MS Word document I downloaded defines them as less than and more than symbols as JKing does above. But this guide lists angle brackets as well.

[Oralloy]

Teresa,

I'd say that the context of use determines what you name the characters.

In a mathematical context, they're less-than and greater-than.

In the programming world, when they're doubled (<< and >>), they're called left-shift and right-shift.

In a quoting context, they're typically called angle brackets.

In a double quoting context (e.g. <<enclosed>>) I've seen them called left-guillemet, right-guillemet, and texas quotes.

But now, this is pressing into silliness. Sorry for stepping onto my high horse.

Cheers!

[code green]

I thought they were chevrons :)

[Oralloy]

Yep, as is the ^

But what's >:D< ?

[MrMancunian]

But what's >:D< ?

Arms wide open :-)

[Dormilich]

moved to HTML/CSS forum as it has nothing to do with PHP.

In a double quoting context (e.g. <<enclosed>>) I've seen them called left-guillemet, right-guillemet, and texas quotes.

guillemets are single character quotation marks (« » ‹ ›), < and > can be used as ASCII replacements. (Guillemets are used in French (sometimes in older German) for quoting)