# How do you type this smiley?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-type-this-smiley/647900
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [January 21, 2013, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-type-this-smiley/647900 "2013-01-21T12:03:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2013, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-type-this-smiley/647900/1 "2013-01-21T12:03:47Z")

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> [@Objective summary of this atheist dude's view on Israel](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-summary-of-this-atheist-dudes-view-on-israel/647777/23):
>
> OP! Y U No Summarize?? ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

( copied from [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=679586) )  
Okay, so smiley art isn’t quite the _Big Thing_ that is was back in 1996 or so…but I’m still curious. How did you draw this one?

Me, I still haven’t learned anything more complex than the old colon-plus-parenthesis .  
🙂

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### Author: ![Sofis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Sofis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofis)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2013, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-type-this-smiley/647900/2 "2013-01-21T12:12:00Z")

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Considering it incorporates Kannada, Georgian and Chinese/Japanese script, I’m pretty sure you type it Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V.

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### Author: ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2013, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-type-this-smiley/647900/3 "2013-01-21T12:14:36Z")

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It’s a font called [Sylfaen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylfaen_%28typeface%29)

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### Author: ![Tom\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@Tom\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_P)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2013, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-type-this-smiley/647900/4 "2013-01-21T12:24:57Z")

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ლ is _las_, the twelfth letter of the [Georgian Alphabet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_alphabet)  
“ಠ” is from the [Kannada alphabet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannada_alphabet), while 益 is Kanji. “ಠ” is often used as eyes, such as in the “look of disapproval”, ಠ\_ಠ  
( and ) are parantheses.

All of these characters are letters from different alphabets, and won’t be found on a single keyboard. So they’re copied and pasted, first from something like a character map character by character, after that, you can copy/paste the whole thing. By using characters from different alphabets, you can create emoticons like these, or (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ (flipping the table).

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### Author: ![Sofis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Sofis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofis)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2013, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-type-this-smiley/647900/5 "2013-01-21T12:25:14Z")

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> [@runner pat](#):
>
> It’s a font called [Sylfaen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylfaen_%28typeface%29)

That’s not really accurate. A font is a specific graphical representation of some set of characters. The characters posted in the OP (and **YogSosoth** ’s original post) are pure text, without any font specifications. It’s up to your browser to figure out which of the fonts you have available to use for the characters. It might pick Sylfaen if you have it installed, but it won’t necessarily. If I paste the smiley into OpenOffice, it picks a combination of Times New Roman (for the fists/Georgian alphabet), Mangal (for the eyes/Kannada) and Simsun (for the mouth/Chinese character).

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### Author: ![standingwave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2013, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-type-this-smiley/647900/6 "2013-01-21T17:10:37Z")

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> [@chappachula](#):
>
> Okay, so smiley art isn’t quite the _Big Thing_ that is was back in 1996 or so…but I’m still curious. How did you draw this one?

They aren’t so much smileys as they are special characters. You can use [Unicode](http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/#links) to enter them. The downside is that they aren’t guaranteed to be seen by everyone as not every browser will have the same degree of unicode support. ☹

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### Author: ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2013, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-type-this-smiley/647900/7 "2013-01-21T21:12:41Z")

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Indeed. I can see the Chinese “nose” and the Georgian “fists” (that don’t really look like fists), but the Kannada characters just show up as placeholder characters for me.

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### Author: ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2013, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-type-this-smiley/647900/8 "2013-01-21T21:16:46Z")

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> [@Tom\_P](#):
>
> … By using characters from different alphabets, you can create emoticons like these, or (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ (flipping the table).

These are emoticons for which “emotion” or thought? They’re lost on me.

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### Author: ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2013, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-type-this-smiley/647900/9 "2013-01-21T23:58:35Z")

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> [@Leo\_Bloom](#):
>
> These are emoticons for which “emotion” or thought? They’re lost on me.

Rage. [Table-flipping rage](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/flipping-tables-%E2%95%AF%E2%96%A1%EF%BC%89%E2%95%AF%EF%B8%B5-%E2%94%BB%E2%94%81%E2%94%BB).

Wow. I just looked at that URL (which comes from the highly-esteemed and inimitable “Know Your Meme” site)… and the URL includes the actual escaped unicode for the emoticon.

Yes. The URL contains the emoticon. How meta is that?
