Comment by dhosek

10 months ago

There’s a certain amount of “it just is” when it comes to non-textual characters. I remember being interviewed by a reporter from The Wall Street Journal about the claim that Wingdings had an antisemitic message secretly encoded in it because NYC output as the sequence skull and crossbones-star of David-thumbs up, but the choice of where those characters were encoded is purely a consequence of grouping similarly themed characters together (so, e.g., the star of David comes in the midst of a sequence of religious symbols).

In a future font (Webdings?) Microsoft deliberately set the letters NYC to be an eye, a heart, and a city skyline, in response to this kerfuffle.