How to send email with heart symbols?

We had an argument yesterday and my girlfriend sent me an email with broken heart symbols in the message subject. How is this possible? Has she hacked my account? I thought email was only text!
Josh Rabinowich

Josh, email is not just “text-only”. Messages with embedded images, fancy text, stationery, colors are all examples of rich-text emails. So including symbols in the email subject is not only possible, it’s actually quite simple.

And NO! I don’t think she has hacked your account (unless your account password was quite common or something which she could have guessed easily). Anywho, let us see how you can send her a nice reply – one that has appropriate symbols in the email subject line.

Heart symbols that you can paste in the email subject

It wasn’t the argument… she got your attention by sending the email with heart symbols, right? I’m no psychologist but am quite certain that was her aim… to grab your attention. But how did she manage to include symbols in the subject line?

The rich-text toolbar on popular services such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail (Outlook.com) or AOL has no option for inserting symbols, so where did she get the hearts from? I presume it was from a web page. She simply copied-pasted the symbols into the email subject. Yes, it’s that simple.

Below are several symbols that you can simply copy and paste in the reply. You would have come across them on chat programs like WhatsApp. They are from emoji and other symbol fonts. Here is how you can use them.

1. Click on the button with the symbol you like.
2. A pop-up appears. Use the Control-C (Windows) or Command-C (Mac) keyboard shortcut to copy it onto the clipboard.
3. Close the pop-up.
4. Paste the symbol anywhere you like – use the keyboard shortcut Control-V (Windows) or Command-V (Mac).

There are actually hundreds of symbols that you can include in the email… not just ones with hearts. But remember Uncle Ben’s advice, “With great power comes great responsibility“. So please use symbols judiciously.

And I’m sure things will patch up once you send her an email with “heart with bandages” symbols! Though it’s not my “job” to bring two people together, I’m always there to answer any problems or questions you may have regarding the Internet or the World Wide Web.

NOTE : The symbols will only be visible to the recipient if they have the required fonts.

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