Up arrow

Usually “look at the thing above this,” often with agreement.

Chat apps and comment threads stack messages downward, so an arrow pointing up points at whatever was just said. Sent alone after someone else's message, ⬆️ means “this one”, “that's my answer too” or “read that”. Add a word (“this ⬆️”, “facts ⬆️”) and it becomes an endorsement; stack three of them and the endorsement gets loud. If the message above is a question, ⬆️ can also mean “see, that's what I was asking.”

Beside a figure it changes job and simply reports direction: a price, a score, a temperature or a weight is going up. The arrow does not judge; a higher salary and a higher electricity bill get the same ⬆️. People also use it for anything that improves or advances: a level up in a game, an upgrade, a promotion, a mood lifting.

In captions it can point at the top of a page or profile (“link ⬆️”), and in directions it does what arrows do on signs: go up, go forward, go this way. On most phones it is drawn as a white arrow on a blue square, so it reads as a button rather than a hand-drawn mark; the thin ↑ used on keyboard keys and in print is a different character.

Why are there so many up arrows?

Each one comes from a different world, and they look it.

The thin ↑ is the typographic arrow from mathematics, keyboard labels and dictionaries. ⬆️ is its heavy, filled cousin, encoded as a plain symbol in 2003 and turned into an emoji in 2010 when the Japanese mobile-carrier emoji sets were brought into Unicode. The arrow-on-a-square look comes from that heritage: carrier emoji were small coloured tiles, and the arrows kept their tile.

Its siblings cover the compass (⬇️ ⬅️ ➡️ and the diagonals), while 🔼 and ⏫ are media-player buttons, 🔝 is a “back to top” button, and 📈 is a rising chart. If you want “this, above me,” ⬆️ is the one people use; if you want “things are improving,” 📈 says it with more feeling.