Upwards Harpoon With Barb Rightwards

At code point U+21BE, the upwards harpoon with barb rightwards (↾) occupies a carefully chosen position within the Arrows allocation. The Unicode Consortium assigned this character to address the need for a reliable, cross-platform representation of this symbol in electronic documents and interfaces.

The hexadecimal value 21BE places this character at decimal position 8638 in the Unicode table. This position within the Arrows range means it shares encoding characteristics with its neighboring characters. The CSS notation \21BE is particularly useful in pseudo-element content properties, while \u{21BE} works in template literals and string concatenation.

Known by its descriptive name referencing "upwards harpoon," this character serves a specific role that generic symbols cannot fill. It appears in specialized typography, technical standards, and digital content where precision in symbol choice directly affects meaning or layout.

Arrow symbols serve as the universal language of direction and flow. From simple left-right pointers to elaborate double-headed and curved variants, these characters guide users through interfaces, illustrate logical relationships in flowcharts, and express mathematical mappings between sets. UI designers rely on arrows for navigation breadcrumbs, dropdown indicators, and carousel controls, while mathematicians use them to denote convergence, limits, and morphisms in category theory.

The earliest directional indicators appeared on typewriters as simple hyphens paired with angle brackets. When IBM developed its original PC character set in the 1980s, four cardinal arrows were among the first graphic characters included. Unicode dramatically expanded the repertoire, encoding arrows from dozens of technical and mathematical traditions. The Supplemental Arrows blocks, added in Unicode 3.2 and later, brought in long arrows, double-barbed variants, and arrows with special tails demanded by logicians and engineers working with formal proof systems.