Should Arrows be Placed Before Link Text or After?

When in doubt, use the real-world for a guideline. In this case, road signs provide a perfect metaphor. In the case of street signs, arrows pointing to the right are always positioned after the text and arrows pointing to the left are positioned before the text. In the case of links, these little chevrons or triangles almost always point to the right so it's natural to position them after the link text.

Not a very authoritative usability article in my book. It's just the intuition of some random guy as far as I know. The arguments are scarce and there are no usability studies to back it up.

Jakob Nielsen has spoiled me.

Intriguingly, I had no opinion on this before going to that page, but after looking at their examples, something about the "arrow after" examples make me want to click on them more. It's only an anecdotal data point, but others comment similarly.

I have the same question for checkboxs (and radioboxes): before or after the text?