What ￩ means
Use ￩ when a narrow compatibility form is required. It points left like ←, but is a different character. Unicode marks it as the narrow compatibility form of ←; some width-conversion tools pair them, but they remain distinct.
Unicode’s 1.1 character list records ￩ beside ← in 1993. That dates this encoded form, not the origin of the arrow itself: the record describes a width variant, not a new direction or meaning.
Why was ￩ made?
To preserve width-sensitive East Asian legacy text.
Unicode groups halfwidth and fullwidth characters as compatibility forms for East Asian legacy encodings. In fixed-pitch East Asian text, this form is allocated half an em, a typographic unit tied to font size, so older data or aligned columns can keep their intended spacing.
Why does ￩ look wrong in my text?
The font and layout decide how narrow it looks.
The halfwidth label does not force every font to draw ￩ at one visible width. Fixed-pitch East Asian text is the intended narrow setting; proportional fonts or other layouts may make it look closer to ← or less compact than expected. Use ← for an ordinary left arrow; use ￩ when a format requires this exact character.
Technical and archival: it is a width-compatibility choice, not a different arrow meaning.
Don’t use ￩ just to make a regular arrow look smaller.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does ￩ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type ￩
￩\FFE9Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.