What is Wingdings?
Wingdings is a symbol font that shipped with Windows 3.1 in 1992. In a normal font, the letter A looks like an A. In Wingdings, the same letter looks like a victory hand. Every key on the keyboard draws a small picture instead: hands, faces, crosses, zodiac signs, folders, a bomb, a skull.
Microsoft built the font in 1990 from symbol sets licensed from the type designers Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. At the time, there was no standard way to type a symbol into a document. A font full of pictures was the workaround.
That history explains how a Wingdings translator works. The text never changes. "HELLO" in Wingdings is still the five letters H, E, L, L, O. Only the shapes on screen are different. The Wingdings Translator shows your text in that font so you can see the symbols, and lets you copy the letters to use somewhere else.
How to use the Wingdings Translator
- Type or paste your text into the box.
- The preview below it redraws your text in the Wingdings font, large enough to read each symbol.
- Click Copy text. You get the original letters, ready to paste.
- In Word or another program that has the font, paste the text, select it, and set the font to Wingdings. The symbols appear.
The preview uses the copy of Wingdings installed on your device. Windows has it, and so does macOS. Phones, tablets and most Linux machines don't. If the preview shows plain letters, your device has no Wingdings to draw with. Use the chart below instead. It shows every symbol as a standard Unicode character, so it works on any screen.
The Wingdings alphabet: every letter and number
Capital and small letters give different symbols. Capitals are mostly hands, faces, flags and religious symbols. Small letters start with the zodiac and then move into shapes. Here is the full chart, taken from the font's Unicode mapping.
Capital letters
| Key | Symbol | What it is | Key | Symbol | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | ✌ | victory hand | N | 🕱 | skull and crossbones |
| B | 🖏 | OK hand | O | 🏳 | white flag |
| C | 👍 | thumbs up | P | 🏱 | pennant |
| D | 👎 | thumbs down | Q | ✈ | airplane |
| E | ☜ | hand pointing left | R | ☼ | sun with rays |
| F | ☞ | hand pointing right | S | 🌢 | droplet |
| G | ☝ | hand pointing up | T | ❄ | snowflake |
| H | 🖗 | hand pointing down | U | 🕆 | Latin cross |
| I | 🖐 | open hand | V | ✞ | shadowed Latin cross |
| J | ☺ | smiley face | W | 🕈 | Celtic cross |
| K | 😐 | neutral face | X | ✠ | Maltese cross |
| L | ☹ | frowning face | Y | ✡ | Star of David |
| M | 💣 | bomb | Z | ☪ | star and crescent |
Small letters
| Key | Symbol | What it is | Key | Symbol | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | ♋ | Cancer | n | ◼ | black square |
| b | ♌ | Leo | o | 🞏 | white square |
| c | ♍ | Virgo | p | 🞐 | bold white square |
| d | ♎ | Libra | q | ❑ | shadowed square (lower right) |
| e | ♏ | Scorpio | r | ❒ | shadowed square (upper right) |
| f | ♐ | Sagittarius | s | 🞟 | small lozenge |
| g | ♑ | Capricorn | t | ⧫ | black lozenge |
| h | ♒ | Aquarius | u | ◆ | black diamond |
| i | ♓ | Pisces | v | ❖ | diamond with white X |
| j | 🙰 | "et" ligature ornament | w | 🞙 | small diamond |
| k | 🙵 | ampersand ornament | x | ⌧ | X in a box |
| l | ⚫ | black circle | y | ⮹ | arrowhead in a box |
| m | 🔾 | shadowed white circle | z | ⌘ | place of interest sign |
Numbers
| Key | Symbol | What it is | Key | Symbol | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 🗀 | folder | 5 | 🗄 | file cabinet |
| 1 | 🗁 | open folder | 6 | ⏳ | hourglass |
| 2 | 🗎 | document | 7 | 🖮 | keyboard |
| 3 | 🗏 | page | 8 | 🖰 | mouse |
| 4 | 🗐 | pages | 9 | 🖲 | trackball |
Punctuation has symbols too. The exclamation mark is a pencil, the double quote is a pair of scissors, and the comma through the slash are four mailboxes.
Worked example: same word, two cases
Because capitals and small letters differ, the same word gives two different results:
HELLO→ 🖗 ☜ ☹ ☹ 🏳 (hand pointing down, hand pointing left, two frowning faces, white flag)hello→ ♒ ♏ ⚫ ⚫ 🞏 (Aquarius, Scorpio, two black circles, white square)
If a secret message looks wrong when you decode it, try the other case first.
How to translate Wingdings back to text
Going the other way is called decoding, and it's how most people meet Wingdings: as a puzzle, a game clue or a strange message. The Wingdings Translator goes from text to symbols. It can't read symbols you paste in or photograph. The chart above works in both directions, though. Find each symbol in the Symbol column and read the key next to it.
Two tips make decoding faster:
- Zodiac signs mean small letters. Cancer through Pisces are a to i. The first three signs, Aries, Taurus and Gemini, sit on the caret, underscore and backtick keys. So a run of zodiac signs is almost always lowercase text.
- Hands and faces mean capitals A to L. A message full of pointing hands is written in capital letters.
If the text came from a Word file and you can still edit it, there's a shortcut. Select it and switch the font to something normal, like Arial. The letters underneath show up at once, because they were there all along.
How to use Wingdings in Word, Google Docs and email
Microsoft Word: paste the text, select it, and choose Wingdings from the font list. To insert a single symbol, use Insert → Symbol and set the font to Wingdings.
Google Docs: Docs doesn't let you upload a font file. If Wingdings isn't listed under Font → More fonts, use Insert → Special characters and search for the symbol by name, such as "skull" or "snowflake". That inserts the Unicode version, which looks the same for every reader.
Email: a rich-text email can carry the font name, but the reader only sees symbols if their device has Wingdings. On a phone, they will usually see your plain letters.
Chat apps and social media: Discord, Instagram and text messages don't let you pick fonts. Pasting Wingdings text there just pastes letters. To post symbols, copy the Unicode characters from the chart instead. For styled names, the Discord font generator uses Unicode that survives pasting.
Why the symbols disappear when you paste: a font is a display setting, not part of the text. When you paste into a place that ignores fonts, the letters arrive and the pictures don't. Unicode symbols, like the ones in the chart, are actual characters, so they keep their shape anywhere.
Wingdings, Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3 and Webdings
Microsoft made several picture fonts, and each one maps the keyboard differently. Wingdings 2 adds more hands, pens and numbered circles. Wingdings 3 is almost all arrows. Webdings, made later for web pages, has its own set of objects and icons. The same letter gives a different symbol in each one.
The Wingdings Translator and the chart above cover the original Wingdings, the one people mean in nearly every search. If your symbols don't match the chart, the text was probably set in one of the others.
The NYC and Q33 NY stories
Wingdings is famous for two rumours. In 1992, days after Windows 3.1 came out, people noticed that "NYC" in Wingdings showed a skull and crossbones, a Star of David and a thumbs up. Some read it as an antisemitic message. Microsoft denied that the order meant anything. You can check the chart: N, Y and C really do give 🕱 ✡ 👍.
After September 11, 2001, an email claimed that "Q33 NY" was the flight number of a plane that hit the towers. In Wingdings it shows an airplane, two pages that look like buildings, a skull and a Star of David. The claim was false. The flights were American Airlines 11 and United Airlines 175.
Like other letter-swap codes such as Morse code or upside-down text, Wingdings is a fixed lookup table. Any word will land on some symbols, and some of those will look like they mean something.
Frequently asked questions
Why does the preview show normal letters instead of symbols?
Your device doesn't have the Wingdings font. That's normal on Android, iPhone, iPad and most Linux systems. The tool draws the preview with the font installed on your device and has nothing to draw with. Use the chart on this page, which uses Unicode and shows on any screen.
Is it "Wingdings" or "wing dings"?
The font is spelled Wingdings, one word. People also search for "windings" and "wing ding". They all mean the same font.
Why do capital and small letters look different?
Wingdings gives every keyboard character its own symbol, and A and a are different characters. Capitals are mostly hands, faces and crosses. Small letters a to i are the zodiac signs, and the rest are shapes.
Can I translate a picture of Wingdings?
Not with this Wingdings translator. It doesn't read images. Match each symbol in the picture against the chart above by eye. Start with the zodiac signs and hands, which narrow down whether the message is in capitals or small letters.
Can I paste Wingdings into Instagram or Discord?
Not as a font. Those apps show plain letters. Copy the Unicode symbols from the chart instead, or try the emoji translator for a picture message that every phone can display.
Does it work for Wingdings 2 or Webdings?
No. The tool and the chart cover the original Wingdings only. The other fonts assign different symbols to the same keys.