What ► means
It points forward or introduces what follows. Put it before a label, step, heading, or link to say this one, next, or look here. The pointer gets its force from direction, not from a built-in command.
It has no single inventor. Arrows shed their shafts and feathers to become bare heads and pointers; one documented symbolic arrow appears in 1737. Pointing hands drawn in manuscript and book margins belong to the same flag-this-passage family.
Why does ► suggest play?
Tape machines taught it to mean play. The reading grew across recording equipment in the 1960s, including Sony's 1968 TC-100, because tape travelled left to right during playback. So use ► as play only where a player, playlist, or media button makes that reading obvious.
Don't confuse it with
2Questions people ask
1Why does ► look different in different apps?
It can. Your font draws the width, height, and spacing, so the same character can look chunky in one app and slim in another.
How to type ►
►\25BACodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.