More intuitive footnote-backreference icon

bvdg · October 27, 2025, 3:35pm

Use case or problem

The character at the end of a footnote, which the reader can click to go back into the text toward the footnote reference, is non-intuitive. It is the character
U+21A9 ︎ LEFTWARDS ARROW WITH HOOK
and I would argue it seems to refer to some sort of newline/carriage return: it points at the start of the next line.

Proposed solution

Choose a character that points into the main text, which is where you’ll go when you click it. For example,

U+2934 ARROW POINTING RIGHTWARDS THEN CURVING UPWARDS
U+2919 ↑ UPWARDS ARROW
U+005E ^ CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT (used by Wikipedia for this purpose)

Current workaround (optional)

This CSS snippet changes the character to something else:

.footnote-backref, .footnote-backref:hover {
    color: transparent;
}
.footnote-backref::before {
    content: '↑';
    color: var(--text-faint);
}

CawlinTeffid · October 27, 2025, 6:42pm

I’ve seen the newline character used for this online (example below; I think it’s meant to convey “back”) but agree something else would be more intuitive. It might be good to survey what’s commonly used.