It’s been almost 10 years since Microsoft Office products started automatically replacing smileys like :), :( and signs like -->, <-- into icons made in Wingdings font.

In 2013, now there are people using computers and phones which are not manufactured by Microsoft and thus, they do not have this proprietary font. If you are one of these people, when you read an email composed with Outlook, you will see something like this:

Thanks, see you again. J

What the heck is this mysterious “J”? Well, it is a smiley face written in Wingdings font. You don’t have it on your device. Sadly, with Office 2013 release, this has not been changed. Here is an alternative with Unicode characters which are more widely available than Wingdings font.

  • :) is shown as J, can be replaced with ☺ (U+263A)

  • :( is shown as L, can be replaced with ☹ (U+2639)

  • <-- is shown as à, can be replaced with ← (U+2190)

  • --> is shown as ß, can be replaced with → (U+2192)

  • <=> is shown as ó, can be replaced with ⇔ (U+21D4)

I hope it does not take another decade to fix this. ☺