Greater-than sign

The greater-than sign is a mathematical symbol that denotes an inequality between two values. The widely adopted form of two equal-length strokes connecting in an acute angle at the right, , has been found in documents dated as far back as 1631. In mathematical writing, the greater-than sign is typically placed between two values being compared and signifies that the first number is greater than the second number. Examples of typical usage include 1.5 > 1 and 1 > −2. The less-than sign and greater-than sign always "point" to the smaller number. Since the development of computer programming languages, the greater-than sign and the less-than sign have been repurposed for a range of uses and operations. The earliest known use of the symbols and is found in Artis Analyticae Praxis ad Aequationes Algebraicas Resolvendas (The Analytical Arts Applied to Solving Algebraic Equations) by Thomas Harriot, published posthumously in 1631. The text states "Signum majoritatis ut a > b significet a majorem quam b (The sign of majority a > b indicates that a is greater than b)" and "Signum minoritatis ut a < b significet a minorem quam b (The sign of minority a < b indicates that a is less than b)." According to historian Art Johnson, while Harriot was surveying North America, he saw a Native American with a symbol that resembled the greater-than sign, in both backwards and forwards forms. Johnson says it is likely Harriot developed the two symbols from this symbol. The greater-than sign is sometimes used for an approximation of the closing angle bracket, . The proper Unicode character is . ASCII does not have angular brackets. In HTML (and SGML and XML), the greater-than sign is used at the end of tags. The greater-than sign may be included with , while produces the greater-than or equal to sign. Usenet quotingPosting styleMarkdown and Diple (textual symbol) In some early e-mail systems, the greater-than sign was used to denote quotations. The sign is also used to denote quotations in Markdown.