typing arrows in plain text?

Type arrows by copy/pasting the Unicode characters in the first column of the below table.

You can also type an HTML entity in the third column and it will render as the appropriate arrow character.

You can also press the Ctrl+Shift+u keyboard combination which will print a u character on the screen. Then after the u type one of the 4-digit hexadecimal codes in the second column and press Enter to render the u+4-digit hexadecimal number that appears on the screen as the appropriate arrow character.

HTML entities for mdash and ndash (for long dashes) are — and –
HTML entities for less than and greater than characters are < and >

Press Ctrl + Shift + U, then type the hexcode of the character, then press Enter.

Hex codes for arrows: