Mirror images stating opposite orderings, and the commonest reversal in elementary mathematics.
The wide end always faces the larger quantity and the point faces the smaller one — that single rule settles both signs at once, and every mnemonic taught for them is a restatement of it. Thomas Harriot introduced the pair together in a work published in 1631, ten years after his death.
The direction of the wedge is the whole difference.
Drawn from the visual attributes recorded for each symbol. Only traits the two records disagree about are listed.
| Trait | Greater-than sign | Less-than sign |
|---|---|---|
| Orientation | mirrored | upright |
| Greater-than sign | Less-than sign | |
|---|---|---|
| What it states | The value on the left is larger | The value on the left is smaller |
| Which end is wide | The left — facing the larger value | The right — facing the larger value |
| Code point | U+003E | U+003C |
| Also used for | Quoting in email, output redirection in shells | Opening a tag in HTML and XML |
| Relationship (from Symbolwise's records) | Commonly confused with Less-than sign — The direction of the wedge is the whole difference.; Opposite of Less-than sign — Mirror images stating converse orderings. | Commonly confused with Greater-than sign — Which way the wedge opens is the entire distinction, and it is reversed easily.; Opposite of Greater-than sign — The same wedge reversed; the two are mirror images and state opposite orderings. |
Unicode Code Chart: Mathematical Operators (U+2200–U+22FF)
The Unicode Consortium · retrieved 2026-07-30
Authoritative for the character's code point, name and block only. Unicode assigns identity; it does not define what a symbol means in use.
Unicode Code Chart: Basic Latin (U+0000–U+007F)
The Unicode Consortium · retrieved 2026-07-30
Authoritative for the character's code point, name and block only. Unicode assigns identity; it does not define what a symbol means in use.
Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-07-30
Tertiary reference. Used for widely-agreed identity and origin summary, not for contested detail or exact dates.
Glossary of mathematical symbols
Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-07-31
Tertiary reference. Used for what the notation means in ordinary mathematical practice and for attribution of its introduction, not for a claim that any body defines it.
Length is the tell. A crescendo hairpin is drawn long, below a stave, and spans the passage it applies to — its extent *is* the instruction. A less-than sign is one character wide and sits between two values. If it stretches, it is music; if it fits between two numbers, it is mathematics.
Between two quantities it compares. After a command it sends that command's output into the named file — and truncates the file first, discarding whatever was there. That truncation is the part that surprises people, and doubling the character appends instead of replacing.
Look at whether the stroke is sharp or curved. The less-than sign is a wedge of two straight strokes meeting at a point and says one number is smaller than another. The subset sign is a single curved stroke and says every member of one set is also a member of another. They are different characters about different kinds of thing, and only typography keeps them apart.
Between two quantities it is a comparison. After a command in a shell it redirects input: the command reads from the named file instead of from the terminal. The meanings are unrelated — the shell use is not 'less than' anything — and only position tells you which you are looking at.