# What is the problem with characters < and > in PDF display? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate:
Include < and > symbol

Why when I create pdf in texlive with `pdflatex`, the characters `<` and `>` are displayed as inverted `!` and `?`, respectively. However, when I copy/past them, they are OK. What is the problem with PDF display. It's like the system does not have appropriate font, but aren't they common characters?

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## marked as duplicate by egreg, topskip, Ian Thompson, Gonzalo Medina, Martin Scharrer♦Mar 13 '12 at 15:54

Possible duplicate question: Include `<` and `>` symbol. – Ian Thompson Mar 13 '12 at 15:11
@IanThompson You are right, but it is very difficult to search for characters like < and >; I tried but search engines including that of tex.stackexchange.com ignore them! – All Mar 13 '12 at 15:17
So they can be pasted correctly but are displayed wrong? This would be the opposite of Angle symbols which can be copy and pasted from PDF then. This seems to be a font/language issue. Try to use a modern font and encoding. See the comment below this answer). Please post a minimal example which shows the behavior. Also please tell us the used version of TeXLive etc. – Martin Scharrer Mar 13 '12 at 15:30
@MartinScharrer as answered `\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}` solved the problem. I use TexLive 2011 on Ubuntu 10.10 – All Mar 13 '12 at 15:42
@Ali: No problem. It is sometimes very difficult to find matching questions. Therefore having duplicate question around, which got linked to the first one, is actually beneficial because its increases the chance for future searches by other people. No reason to delete this question! – Martin Scharrer Mar 14 '12 at 18:11

The characters are math characters. To get them to appear in text mode as inequalities you need to use `\(<\)` and `\(>\)`.