Unicode Arrows List

The arrows everyone uses, → ⇒ ↩ ➜ and the arrow emoji, are on the main Arrow Symbols page. This page holds the other 209, every arrow from the four later blocks that the main page does not show. Three come from Supplemental Arrows-A (U+27F0 to U+27FF), 111 from Supplemental Arrows-B (U+2900 to U+297F), 58 from Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows (U+2B00 to U+2BFF) and 37 from Supplemental Arrows-C (U+1F800 to U+1F8FF). None of them is filler. Each was encoded because some field needed exactly that shape: mathematics, the Z specification language, knot theory, Lithuanian dialect research or the Wingdings fonts that millions of old documents were set in.

The grid follows the subheadings of the Unicode code charts (miscellaneous arrows, arrow tails, crossing arrows for knot theory, harpoons, arrows combined with relations, fish tails, triangle-headed arrows, wide-headed barb arrows) with one change: left- and right-pointing partners sit side by side. Unicode 3.2 encoded many right-pointing arrows in 2002 and only added their mirror images in Unicode 5.1 in 2008, in another block, so ⤀ lives at U+2900 while its mirror ⬴ lives at U+2B34. The columns ← ↑ → ↓ put such pairs back together, and an empty cell means that member of the family is either on the main page or was never encoded.

Click a cell to copy the arrow and open its page, which gives the code point, the Unicode name, the HTML code and the fonts that draw it.

Mathematical arrows: maps-to, Z notation and the knot-theory crossings

The 2002 additions came out of the STIX project, in which scientific publishers listed every symbol their journals had ever set. Many are an arrow with one extra mark that changes the meaning. ⤇ is maps to with a double shaft, ⟻ and ⤆ are the maps from partners of ↦, and ⤅ is a two-headed maps-to. The Unicode names list even records the roles of seven of them in Z notation, the formal specification language: ⤀ partial surjection, ⤁ finite surjection, ⤔ partial injection, ⤕ finite injection, ⤖ bijection, ⤗ surjective injection and ⤘ finite surjective injection. The system is readable once you know it: a tail marks an injection, a second head a surjection, one vertical stroke a partial function and two strokes a finite one.

Relation signs ride on arrows in ⥱ (equals above), ⥲ and ⥴ (tilde above or below), ⥵ (almost equal below), ⥶ ⥸ (less-than, greater-than), ⥹ ⥻ (subset, superset) and in the arrows drawn through a sign, ⥷ ⥺ ⭃ ⭄. They say that a map is also an equality, a similarity or an inclusion. ⥰, a double arrow with a rounded head, is cross-referenced in the charts to the superset sign ⊃. ⤊ and ⭅ extend the double arrows to three and four shafts, ⬱ is three arrows pointing left, and ⥂ ⥃ ⥄ set a long arrow over a short one, which chemists read as an equilibrium that lies towards the side of the longer arrow.

The eight crossing arrows ⤧ ⤩ ⤪ ⤬ ⤯ ⤰ ⤱ ⤲ are headed crossing arrows for knot theory in the charts: each shows which strand passes over which at a crossing, so a knot diagram can be spelled out in a line of text. The hooked diagonals ⤣ ⤤ ⤥ ⤦, the arrows to a black diamond ⤝ ⤞ ⤟ ⤠, the arrow tails ⤙ ⤚ ⤛ ⤜ (tails without heads, meant to be set beside another arrow) and the four fish tails ⥼ ⥽ ⥾ ⥿ complete the mathematical set.

Harpoons: the complete set of 38

A harpoon is an arrow with half a head, a single barb on one side. The plain single harpoons (↼ ↽ ↿ ⇂ and their kin) and the chemist's equilibrium pair ⇌ ⇋ are on the main page; the 38 here are the entire harpoon section of Supplemental Arrows-B, U+294A to U+296F, without a gap. Sixteen end at a bar or start from one (⥒ ⥓ ⥔ ⥕ to a bar, ⥚ ⥛ ⥜ ⥝ from a bar, and their barb-down and barb-left twins), four are pairs pointing the same way (⥢ ⥣ ⥤ ⥥), six are opposing pairs with both barbs on the same side (⥦ ⥧ ⥨ ⥩ ⥮ ⥯), four set a harpoon above or below a long dash (⥪ ⥫ ⥬ ⥭), and eight are two-way harpoons with a barb at each end (⥊ ⥋ ⥌ ⥍ ⥎ ⥏ ⥐ ⥑).

Their names follow one rule, which the grid labels keep. A horizontal harpoon has its barb up or down; a vertical one has it left or right; and the charts pair barb up on a horizontal harpoon with barb right on a vertical one. So ⥒ is LEFTWARDS HARPOON WITH BARB UP TO BAR and its upward counterpart ⥔ is UPWARDS HARPOON WITH BARB RIGHT TO BAR. The little harpoon written over a letter to mark a vector is not one of these: it is the combining mark U+20D1, which attaches to the letter before it.

In HTML and MathML these harpoons still answer to their old ISO entity names, where the harpoon is called a vector: ⥒ is ⥒, ⥎ ⥎, ⥢ ⥢ and ⥊ ⥊. In LaTeX with unicode-math ⥒ is \barleftharpoonup, ⥊ \leftrightharpoonupdown and ⥢ \leftharpoonsupdown.

Triangle-headed, barbed and Wingdings arrows from Unicode 7.0

In June 2014 Unicode 7.0 encoded the symbols of Microsoft's Wingdings and Webdings fonts so that documents set in them would survive a change of font. The arrows of Wingdings 3 landed in two places. The triangle-headed arrows (⭤ ⭬ ⭱ ⭲ ⭷ ⭸, the pairs ⮀ ⮂ ⮄ ⮆ ⮇, the U-turns ⮌ ⮍ ⮎ and the bent tips ⮠ ⮡ ⮢ ⮣ ⮤ ⮥ ⮧) filled gaps in Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows, and the charts note their keyboard roles: ⭱ is up tab, ⭲ right tab and ⭸ end. The two-headed ⯮ and ⯯, fast cursor right and fast cursor down, followed in Unicode 8.0 (2015). The black curved ⮫ ⮯, the ribbon arrows ⮰ ⮷ and the 3D arrowheads ⮘ ⮚ ⮛ come from the same source.

Supplemental Arrows-C (U+1F800 to U+1F8FF) took the systematic series: arrows with equilateral heads in three sizes and weights (🠝 🠟 are the heavy ones with a large head), triangle-headed arrows with graded shafts (🠮 heavy, 🠰 very heavy) and the wide-headed barb arrows in five weights: light 🡠 🡣 🡥 🡦, regular 🡨 🡩 🡪 🡫 🡭 🡮, medium 🡳, heavy 🡸 🡹 🡻 🡽 🡾 and very heavy 🢁 🢆 🢇. The shaft pieces 🢜 🢝 🢞 🢟 (heavy, in widths named one, two thirds, one half and one third) and 🢬 🢭 (white) are not arrows at all but lengths of shaft to set behind an arrowhead when a longer arrow is wanted, as Wingdings 3 users did. 🢡 🢥 🢧 🢪 are shaded and shadowed white arrows, cousins of the Dingbats ➩ ➪ on the main page, 🢔 and 🢗 put a white arrow inside a triangular head, and 🢚 has a notched tail.

Two arrows here belong to linguistics rather than to Microsoft. ⭏ and ⭝ are headed intonation marks for Lithuanian dialectology in the charts: ⭏ records a slight fall in tone at the end of a word or an overall fall at the start of a phrase, ⭝ a continued fall. They arrived in Unicode 7.0 together with their rising partners, which are on the main page.

How to type these arrows and which fonts show them

None of them has a keyboard shortcut, so copying from this page is the practical route. Otherwise, in Word and most Windows programs type the hex code and press Alt+X (2907 then Alt+X gives ⤇, 2952 gives ⥒, 1F86A gives 🡪); on a Mac open the Character Viewer with Ctrl+Cmd+Space and search by name (harpoon, fish tail, barb arrow); on Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U, type the hex code and press space. In HTML write the numeric form, ⤇, or a named entity where one exists: ⤅ is ⤅, ⤖ ⤖, ⤌ ⤌, ⤍ ⤍, ⥰ ⥰ and ⥼ ⥼. With pdfLaTeX the stmaryrd package provides \Mapsto for ⤇ and \longmapsfrom for ⟻; unicode-math names the whole set, for example \twoheadrightarrowtail for ⤖ and \rightimply for ⥰.

Font support is the real pitfall. Supplemental Arrows-A and B are in the mathematical fonts, Cambria Math, STIX Two Math, DejaVu Serif and Noto Sans Math, so ⤇ ⥊ ⥼ display in Word's equation editor and on most desktops. The left-pointing mirrors added in 2008 (⬴ ⬶ ⬹ ⭀ and their neighbours) are in fewer fonts; on a typical Linux desktop only Noto Sans Math draws them. The 2014 triangle-headed arrows and everything in Supplemental Arrows-C generally need Noto Sans Symbols 2, and on many phones they show as an empty box. If a cell on this page is blank for you, that is why: the character exists, your font does not draw it.

When a document must work everywhere, pick the common relative from the main page (⇌ for ⥦, ↣ for ⤖, → for 🡪) and keep the rare form for PDFs and print, where you control the font.