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6.4 HTML Emojis

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.

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">

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):

Example 1: ABC with utf8
<!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>

Example Explained

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:

Example 2: smiley face
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
</head>
<body>

<h1>My First Emoji</h1>

<p>&#128512;</p>

</body>
</html>

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

Example 3: bigger emojis
<!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>

Some Emoji Symbols in UTF-8

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

For a full list, please go to HTML Emoji Reference.