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Emojis in HTML

Emojis are characters from the UTF-8 character set: 😄 😍 💗

What are Emojis?

Emojis look like images, or icons, but they are not.

They are letters (characters) from the UTF-8 (Unicode) character set.

note

UTF-8 covers almost all of the characters and symbols in the world.

The HTML charset Attribute

To display an HTML page correctly, a web browser must know the character set used in the page.

This is specified in the <meta> tag:

<meta charset="UTF-8">
note

If not specified, UTF-8 is the default character set in HTML.

UTF-8 Characters

Many UTF-8 characters cannot be typed on a keyboard, but they can always be displayed using numbers (called entity numbers):

  • A is 65
  • B is 66
  • C is 67

Example:

<!DOCTYPE html>  
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>I will display A B C</p>
<p>I will display &#65; &#66; &#67;</p>
</body>
</html>

The <meta charset="UTF-8"> element defines the character set.

The characters A, B, and C, are displayed by the numbers 65, 66, and 67.

To let the browser understand that you are displaying a character, you must start the entity number with &# and end it with ; (semicolon).

Emoji Characters

Emojis are also characters from the UTF-8 alphabet:

  • 😄 is 128516
  • 😍 is 128525
  • 💗 is 128151

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>  
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<h1>My First Emoji</h1>
<p>&#128512;</p>
</body>
</html>

Output:

Symbol exampl

Since Emojis are characters, they can be copied, displayed, and sized just like any other character in HTML.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>  
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<h1>Sized Emojis</h1>
<p style="font-size:48px">
&#128512; &#128516; &#128525; &#128151;
</p>
</body>
</html>

Output:

Symbol exampl

Some Emoji Symbols in UTF-8

EmojiValue
🗻&#128507;
🗼&#128508;
🗽&#128509;
🗾&#128510;
🗿&#128511;
😀&#128512;
😁&#128513;
😂&#128514;
😃&#128515;
😄&#128516;
😅&#128517;