Combining Right Arrow Above

It labels a vector; the arrow does not point right.

A vector is a quantity with size and direction. In vector notation, an over-arrow is one way to mark that a letter represents a vector; boldface is another. A hat often marks a unit vector, one with length 1. As of October 2024, Physical Review A’s style guide accepted boldface or over-arrows for vectors and carets for unit vectors.

Vector analysis, a mathematical system for working with vectors and scalars (numbers without direction), took shape in the 19th century. Gibbs privately printed Elements of Vector Analysis in 1881–1884 to present compact notation for vectors and scalars; Heaviside developed a parallel system.

Why does the arrow appear in the wrong place?

It needs a base character and reliable font placement.

Put the base first, then the mark: x⃗, not ⃗x. The font and text renderer must position the mark over x; weak support can leave it floating or shifted.

After AB, the mark normally attaches to B, not across the whole expression. In LaTeX, use \overrightarrow{AB} or a math editor for an arrow spanning several characters.