emoticons for all of us, one code to rule them all
What Is Unicode
Unicode is a standard developed to create a consistent way to represent text from all of the world’s writing ✍ systems. Basically if I wanted to write a post in America that included a Unicorn 🦄 there is a Unicode number for expressing that particular animal. Then if say someone in another country that was not reading my article in English was reading my article their device would render the same Unicode character and understand what I am trying to express.
How To Find Unicode
Well since Unicode is a standard they don’t try to hide it from you but it definitely isn’t the most user friendly text either.
The entire standard can be found at: https://home.unicode.org/
How I Find Unicode For My Articles
Currently I am using a site that has a search function to quickly find a Unicode character to help express my writing.
Unicode In The Wild
When browsing other popular sites like social media you will probably see Unicode in action. When you see emoticons in use like these you can lookup the Unicode and manually insert them into your Medium articles or an even better method is to just copy/paste the icons and let your browser do the converting for you:
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I find this a super quick way to utilize Unicode characters that I may not have yet discovered. So get out there and emote your world 🎉.
