👈🏽
backhand index pointing left: medium skin tone
Unicode: 1F448 1F3FD
Description
A hand pointing left with medium skin tone.
Group:
People & Body > hand-single-finger
Status:
fully-qualified
Emotion:
Indicates direction, emphasizes text, or draws attention to something on the left.
Backstory
The pointing hand emoji was introduced in Unicode 6.0 (2010). Skin tone modifiers like 1F3FD (medium skin tone) were added in Unicode 8.0 (2015) to allow for more diverse representation.
Usage Examples
- Indicating direction: "The restrooms are this way 👈"
- Highlighting text: "Read the disclaimer on the left 👈"
- Drawing attention: "This is the main point 👈"
- Referring to something previous: "As mentioned earlier 👈"
Cultural Differences
Western culture:
Frequently used to direct attention or provide instruction, like 'See left for details.'
East Asian culture:
Similar usage to Western cultures for direction, but can also be used in informal online communication to point to a specific user or comment.