I’ve been asked this 3 times in the past month….How do I insert music notes or hearts into my Facebook or Twitter  status?

Even my mom knows how emoticons work, but these aren’t your average smiley face characters; you’re entering the strange world of ASCII SPECIAL CHARACTERS!

There are two ways…

1) Copy ASCII symbols from here (copy paste them directly)

♥ – heart
♫ – Two musical notes
♪ – One musical note
☺ – white smiley face
☻ – black smiley face
☼ – sunshine

2) Make them yourself!

This works for some people and not for others, but each of these characters can be typed on your keyboard using the ‘alt’ button.  If you’re on a laptop make sure you ‘Num Lock’ is on!

Next, hold down ‘alt’ (the one in the bottom left of your keyboard) and press type the following:

Hold ‘alt’ then type 1 -☺ (white smiley face symbol)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 2 -☻(black smiley face symbol)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 3 – ♥ (heart symbol)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 4 – ♦ (diamond symbol)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 5 – ♣ (clubs symbol)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 6 – � (black diamond with question mark)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 7 – • (round bullet)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 8 – ◘ (block with white circle)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 9 – ○ (unfilled white circle)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 10 – ◙  (block with filled white circle)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 11 – ♂ (man symbol)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 12 – ♀ (woman symbol)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 13 – ♪  (One music note)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 14 – ♫ (Two music notes)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 15 – ☼ (sunburst)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 16 – ► (black triangle pointing right)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 17 – ◄ (black triangle pointing left)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 18 – ↕ (up and down arrows)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 19 – ‼ (bang bang, or two exclamation points…it’s one character)
Hold ‘alt’ then type 20 – ¶ (paragraph symbol)