directional arrows pointing in unusal directions

Sorry if this has been asked a thousand times before. I tried to search the forum but found nothing.

The three arrows have started to point in different directions. Sometimes the z arrow faces in the x direction, other times the y and the same for the other arrows. I’m assuming I’ve pressed some button that caused the direction to be determined by the individual vertices, faces or edges it’s placed on… but I do not know how to change it back!!! Any help would be appreciated.

Change the transform orientation (TO) back to global and pivot point back to median if that has been changed too. Both are on the 3d view header next to each other and hotkeys are alt+space for TO menu and ctrl+comma to get pivot back to default median.