U+21B9 · Other symbol
LaTeX
\barleftarrowrightarrowbar
Leftwards Arrow To Bar Over Rightwards Arrow To Bar Symbol ↹
↹ is leftwards arrow to bar over rightwards arrow to bar, U+21B9. Unicode also records it as “tab with shift tab”. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Other symbol.
Also known as
- tab with shift tab
Unicode 1.0 called this character left arrow to bar over right arrow to bar. The standard renamed it later, but documents, fonts and font-editing tools from that era still use the old name.
Codes & technical data
| Unicode | U+21B9 | |
|---|---|---|
| HTML hex | ↹ | |
| HTML decimal | ↹ | |
| CSS | \21B9 | |
| JavaScript | \u{21B9} | |
| Python | \U000021B9 | |
| Java / C# | \u21B9 | |
| Rust | \u{21b9} | |
| Swift | \u{21B9} | |
| PHP | \u{21B9} | |
| URL encoded | %E2%86%B9 | |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 86 B9 | |
| UTF-16 bytes | 21B9 | |
| Base64 | 4oa5 | |
| Decimal | 8633 | |
| LaTeX | \barleftarrowrightarrowbar | |
| Category | Other symbol (So) | |
| Introduced | Unicode 1.1 | |
Will ↹ survive being pasted?
- Normalisation. Yes. ↹ is unchanged by NFKC, so it survives normalising systems intact.
- Legacy encodings. ↹ is Unicode-only — it has no Latin-1 equivalent, so a system stuck on an 8-bit encoding cannot represent it.
- Size. 3 bytes in UTF-8. Character-limited fields — SMS, bios, some form validators — usually count bytes, not characters.
Unicode cross-references
The standard points readers of ↹ at these characters — usually because they look alike, or because one is the correct choice where the other is often used by mistake.
Other bar characters
Unicode names 24 characters ending in “bar”. They differ by direction, weight or decoration rather than by meaning.
Nearby in Arrows
The core arrow set: every direction, plus doubled, dashed, hooked and looped variants. Anything not here is in one of the four supplemental arrow blocks, which exist because this one filled up.
How to type ↹
| Windows | Type 21B9 then press Alt+X |
|---|---|
| macOS | Press Ctrl+Cmd+Space, then search for “leftwards arrow to bar over rightwards arrow to bar” |
| Linux | Press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 21b9, press Enter |
| HTML | ↹ |
About Unicode’s Other symbol category
Unicode files this under "other symbol" — the catch-all for pictographs, signs and marks that are neither maths, currency, nor letter-like. It is the largest symbol category in the standard.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I type the ↹ leftwards arrow to bar over rightwards arrow to bar symbol?
- On Windows, type 21B9 and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 21b9. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
- What is the code for ↹?
- Leftwards Arrow To Bar Over Rightwards Arrow To Bar is U+21B9 and in LaTeX as \barleftarrowrightarrowbar. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
- What kind of character is ↹?
- Leftwards Arrow To Bar Over Rightwards Arrow To Bar is filed under Other symbol in the Arrows block, and was introduced in Unicode 1.1. Unicode files this under "other symbol" — the catch-all for pictographs, signs and marks that are neither maths, currency, nor letter-like. It is the largest symbol category in the standard.