Wingdings

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Wingdings is a TrueType - font from Microsoft that instead of letters a variety of graphical symbols contains. The font is supplied with all editions of Windows since version 3.1 .

Character set (selection)

The character set was assembled by Microsoft in 1990 from characters licensed from Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes . They designed the symbols for their Lucida font family . The font contains well-known ideograms such as the telephone symbol and the Star of David as well as arrows and the signs of the zodiac . Other variants appeared under the names Wingdings 2 and Wingdings 3 and Webdings .

Some wingdings symbols

Although this character set is not available in Unicode , many symbols from it can be found in the Unicode block Dingbats .

Internet myths

Wingdings NYC.png

Just days after Windows 3.1 was released in 1992, it emerged that the string "NYC" ( New York City ) in Wingdings was represented by a skull, a star of David, and a hand with a thumb up. While critics saw it as an anti-Semitic message, Microsoft stated that the assignment of the various symbols to individual letters was largely random when creating the font and that an anti-Semitic connotation was therefore absolutely unintentional.

Webdings NYC.png

In the Webdings font, later published by Microsoft, the character string “NYC” is represented by an eye, a heart and the silhouette of a city, which is colloquial for “I love New York”.

Wingdings Q33 NY.png

After the events of September 11, 2001 in New York, it was rumored that one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center had flight number Q33 NY, which in Wingdings is an airplane, two leaves (which here represent towers), represents a skull and the Star of David, but none of the aircraft had the number Q33 NY.

Web links

Commons : Wingdings  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b Wingdings on microsoft.com. Retrieved September 17, 2016.
  2. ^ Charles Bigelow: Notes on Lucida designs. tug.org. November 2005, accessed September 17, 2016.
  3. ^ Webdings on microsoft.com. Retrieved September 17, 2016.
  4. Hubertus Volmer: Everything is very different. The many 9/11 lies. N-TV . September 10, 2011, accessed September 17, 2016.