What’s the point of those weird fonts available on commercially available word processing programs that turns each word into a series of unusual shapes and figures? Are they purely random shapes, or is it possible to be able to learn to “read” it? Is there any practical application, or is this strictly on the computer for shits and giggles?
Thanks to those who respond.
I think you’re supposed to use them one at a time for special effect, not write words with them. They correspond to letters only because that’s what all fonts are organized as.
It’s a leftover from early computers and printers so you could add a few graphics. Those blocks can be put together for graphics. The fonts match some dot matrix printer’s built in fonts. It was of use in the 80’s. I really haven’t used them for decades. They had their uses on the early graphics cards too, not just the printers. Those graphics blocks were in the graphics card’s chips too for ASCii graphics.
Hey, I still use them sometimes. The “checkbox” symbol, for instance, is pretty useful.
These types of fonts are known as dingbats. Another example is Webdings. Wikipedia defines a dingbat as an ornament, character or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a “printer’s ornament” or “printer’s character”.
It sounds like you are talking about the high-ASCII characters, which (among many others) include horizontal and vertical line drawing characters, rather than the wing dings font.
I use them for creating unique bullets (when appropriate… no smiley faces on a report about the current economy, of course).
Probably some are never used at all. And it makes them cry. :*(
I picked up a virus once upon a time that turned everything on that computer into wing-ding font and there was some important stuff there. It cost me $125.00 to get it cleared and I thought some terrible thoughts about the morons who thought it was funny.
Me, too. And dingbats fonts are fun for spicing up my documents, more so at home than work. I’ve downloaded many decorative wingdings fonts just for fun.
And fun bullets, too.
Friend in I in high school used to use Wingdings to “encrypt” messages to each other. Type a message, select all, change font, save file. When we got the encrypted file just do a select all, and change the font back. Yep, we were l33t haxxors.
-Otanx
My company (publisher) uses them, usually a combination, as a chapter opener icon.
We also occasionally use them for bullets.