What ← means
Read it according to what it points toward. Beside instructions, ← can indicate the previous step; between mathematical expressions, it marks a relationship defined by the notation.
The wider arrow family appears in directional diagrams: around 1737, Bernard Forest de Bélidor’s waterwheel treatise used an arrow for water flow and rotation. Later examples include logical implication (“one statement implies another”) in 1922 and mappings (“assigning one object to another”) by 1936.
In right-to-left text, ← is not automatically mirrored. Choose its direction for the intended meaning, not simply the paragraph’s reading order.
In chat, ← is a terse pointer.
In a formula, do not read ← as “return.”
Don't confuse it with
4Questions 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 ←
←\2190Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.