Left Arrow vs Less-Than Sign

The leftwards arrow (←, U+2190) is a directional symbol used in UI navigation, mathematical set theory, logic, and decorative contexts, while the less-than sign (<, U+003C) is an ASCII mathematical comparison operator that also functions as the tag-opening delimiter in HTML and XML. In HTML and XML, the less-than sign must always be escaped as &lt; when used as literal content, because parsers treat a bare < as the start of a markup tag; failing to escape it causes malformed documents and security vulnerabilities like XSS. The arrow symbol U+2190 does not require escaping in HTML and can be used as-is or written as &larr; — it will never be confused for markup by a browser. Visually, the two look similar at small sizes, but the arrow has a shaft and a proper arrowhead, whereas the less-than sign is a simple angle bracket without a horizontal line. Related arrow characters include ↔ (left-right arrow, U+2194), ⇐ (left double arrow, U+21D0), and ⟵ (long leftwards arrow, U+27F5), all of which are distinct from the mathematical ≤ (less-than or equal to, U+2264).