U+219A · Math symbol
HTML entity
↚
LaTeX
\nleftarrow
Leftwards Arrow With Stroke Symbol ↚
↚ is leftwards arrow with stroke, U+219A — \nleftarrow in LaTeX. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Math symbol.
Also known as
Unicode 1.0 called this character left arrow with stroke. The standard renamed it later, but documents, fonts and font-editing tools from that era still use the old name.
What Unicode says about ↚
negation of 2190
— annotation from the Unicode Standard, NamesList.txt
Codes & technical data
| Unicode | U+219A | |
|---|---|---|
| HTML hex | ↚ | |
| HTML decimal | ↚ | |
| CSS | \219A | |
| JavaScript | \u{219A} | |
| Python | \U0000219A | |
| Java / C# | \u219A | |
| Rust | \u{219a} | |
| Swift | \u{219A} | |
| PHP | \u{219A} | |
| URL encoded | %E2%86%9A | |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 86 9A | |
| UTF-16 bytes | 219A | |
| Base64 | 4oaa | |
| Decimal | 8602 | |
| HTML entity | ↚ | |
| LaTeX | \nleftarrow | |
| Decomposes to | ↚ | |
| Category | Math symbol (Sm) | |
| 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.
Other stroke characters
Unicode names 24 characters ending in “stroke”. 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 219A then press Alt+X |
|---|---|
| macOS | Press Ctrl+Cmd+Space, then search for “leftwards arrow with stroke” |
| Linux | Press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 219a, press Enter |
| HTML | ↚ |
About Unicode’s Math symbol category
Unicode classifies this as a mathematical symbol, which means software that lays out formulas treats it as an operator or relation and gives it spacing accordingly, rather than setting it tight against its neighbours like a letter.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I type the ↚ leftwards arrow with stroke symbol?
- On Windows, type 219A and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 219a. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
- What is the code for ↚?
- Leftwards Arrow With Stroke is U+219A, written in HTML as ↚ and in LaTeX as \nleftarrow. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
- What kind of character is ↚?
- Leftwards Arrow With Stroke is filed under Math symbol in the Arrows block, and was introduced in Unicode 1.1. Unicode classifies this as a mathematical symbol, which means software that lays out formulas treats it as an operator or relation and gives it spacing accordingly, rather than setting it tight against its neighbours like a letter.