How to type Up Down Arrow
To type Up Down Arrow (↕), press Alt + 18 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or write ↕ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+2195 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 2195 on Linux, or 2195 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Up Down Arrow
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+2195
- Windows
- Alt + 18
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 18 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| Mac | N/A | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ↕ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+2195 | UP DOWN ARROW |
Symbols related to Up Down Arrow
These are filed under arrow in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other arrows symbols
↕ lives in the Arrows block (U+2190-U+21FF), arrows in every direction and weight. Within Unicode it is classified as So, a symbol.
What Up Down Arrow is used for
In mathematical notation ↕ is a relation: it makes a claim about the two things either side of it, which is true or false rather than a value to work out. TeX gives a relation more space than an operator, and breaks a long line at one in preference to breaking at an operator. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\updownarrow$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
How Up Down Arrow behaves in software
↕ is East Asian Ambiguous: one column in a Western locale and two in a CJK one. That is why a table that lines up on your machine can break on somebody else's, with no change to the text at all. It carries no direction of its own, so in a line that mixes English with Arabic or Hebrew it takes the direction of the text around it rather than forcing one.
Every way to write Up Down Arrow
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+2195 |
| Decimal | 8597 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 86 95 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 21 95 |
| HTML entity | ↕ |
| HTML numeric | ↕ or ↕ |
| CSS | \2195 |
| JavaScript | \u2195 |
| Python | \u2195 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%86%95 |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\updownarrow$ |
| SVG | 2195.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ↕ arrives as ↕
One character has become three, which is what a three-byte UTF-8 sequence looks like when each byte is read separately: E2 86 95 read as Windows-1252 gives exactly ↕. The text is intact and the damage is in the reading, so setting the reader to UTF-8 restores it and retyping does not. A rectangle instead of the mojibake means the opposite: the encoding is right and the font has no glyph at U+2195, which for a character this far outside Latin-1 is common in older office fonts.