Symbols & Emojis
Decorative text dividers, Kaomoji, special Unicode symbols, Zalgo glitch text, Wingdings, and emoji history.
Emoji and Unicode — The Complete History of How Pictographs Became a Global Language
The full story of emoji in Unicode — from Shigetaka Kurita's 1999 DoCoMo design to Unicode standardization, the emoji wars between Apple/Google/Microsoft, ZWJ sequences, skin tone modifiers, and how emoji work as text.
Unicode Text Decoration — Strikethrough, Underline, and Overlay Effects Without HTML
How Unicode combining characters produce strikethrough, underline, slash-through, and other text decoration effects in plain text — with no HTML, no Markdown, no formatting. Works on any platform.
Wingdings, Dingbats, and Symbol Fonts — History, Meaning, and What They Became
The complete history of Wingdings and Dingbats — from printer's ornaments to Microsoft's most-mocked font, the conspiracy theories, the Unicode absorption of symbol fonts, and where their descendants live today.
Zalgo Text and Combining Diacritics — The Unicode Behind the Glitch Aesthetic
The complete guide to Zalgo text and Unicode combining diacritical marks — how combining characters work, why stacking them creates the glitch effect, platform rendering limits, and how to use them for aesthetic text.