☺
Misc Symbol 59
- Unicode
- U+263A
- Category
- Zodiac
- HTML Entity
- ☺
- CSS
- \263A
The White Smiling Face (☺) is a classic typographic symbol that predates modern colorful emojis, originally appearing in the 1981 IBM PC character set. It represents happiness, friendliness, and positivity, often used today to add a vintage digital aesthetic to plain text. While modern messaging platforms may render it as a standard yellow emoji, its true Unicode form is a simple, minimalist outline of a smiling face.
How to Type
- Windows
- Alt+1 (numpad) or Alt+9786
- macOS
- Control+Command+Space then search "White Smiling Face"
- Linux
- Ctrl+Shift+U then 263A
- HTML
- ☺
In Programming
In early terminal-based games like Dwarf Fortress or Rogue, this symbol was famously used to represent the player character. It is also occasionally used in command-line scripts to indicate a successful operation or positive status.
Tags
ASCII smiley
DOS smiley face
IBM PC character
Unicode smile symbol
cheerful
emoticon
happy face
outline smile
plain text smile
retro smiley
smile
smiley
text art smiley
typographic happy face
vintage emoji