Heart text symbols
I can bet you've seen the ♥ heart symbol lots of times before on Facebook, MySpace, and Youtube. There also are several more heart symbols I know. Here are all of them:
It's because of the feeling it shares! ^.^ Love.. Ahh.. The passion, the agony.. This marvelous, magnificent and charming feeling can hardly be expressed in other words than just Love. You feel the hormones flowing through your whole body, changing the way you feel, act.. think. Time stops and you see the tiniest things that surround you. Things you would never have noticed otherwise. Ordinary, but yet somehow very satisfying, when you look at them now.
What heart symbol means
I think, everybody who ever fell in love knows that it gives a strong feeling of harmony. Of calming safety and satisfaction. You feel as if you have ultimately found the right person you can share your life with.
And, somehow, this feeling is most present in your very heart.
This is the key to why heart symbol is so popular. Just like with emoticons, we share our feelings in this way. Not everything can be explained with plain text. But.. Thanks to heart sign, we can partially express our love. ❥
How to type a heart?
Choose your platform and read a guide.
On Windows
Main article
Alt codes
If you're running Windows on your Desktop PC, or Laptop (not Macbook, though) then you can use Alt codes. I'm not sure about Netbooks, but I'd recommend you read and try. Alt codes are keyboard combinations (shortcuts) to type additional symbols not available on standard keyboard layout. You can type practically all frequently used symbols with this shortcut series. Read my reference for more details.
Following is an Alt code of heart symbol. Try it if you know how to make alt codes. You should remember them if you want to type notes from your keyboard with this technique some time later.
| Alt code | Symbol |
|---|---|
| 3 | ♥ |
Shift states
This is fastest and easiest to use. You can type any possible character, symbol, or sign from Unicode encoding with shift states. Just like you use Shift key to type capital (UPCASE) letters and special sign, you can assign more symbols to Alt and Ctrl keys.
The only problem is that it takes about 5-15 minutes to make and setup a custom layout with your desired symbols. But it's not a big problem, is it?..
You can assign all possible heart symbols (♥ ❤ ❥ ❣ ❦ ❧) and any other text characters to your keyboard with this technique.
Character map
There is a standard built-in program on Windows called "Character Map", or simply "CharMap". Using it, you can enter any possible symbol installed on your computer. That's a hell lot larger range than you can get with alt codes. Read the reference below to find out how to use it.
On Mac
Keyboard viewer
To make special characters with your keyboard on Mac computer you'll most likely have to use Keyboard Viewer. The character range (number of different symbols) that it gives to you is pretty wide. You can use it to see the layout of characters on keyboard for any chosen language. For example, if U.S. is selected in the Input menu, you see the characters that appear on a U.S. keyboard in Keyboard Viewer. Also, you can choose to view shortcuts for symbols and signs that are most often used, like "√ ∑ π ∞ ∆ ™ © æ £ ¢", etc.
It is easy to use and can be very helpful for some, so read my guide for mac keyboard symbols.
But! You can't type heart symbols with this technique. Not all symbols can be written with it. It looks, like you'll have to use character palette to make the symbols. Or just copy paste the ♥ ❤ ❥ ❣ ❦ ❧ heart signs.
Character palette
If you want to insert any possible text symbol into your writings, such as putting a flat sign ♭, or heart ♥ in the middle of a sentence, you can use the Mac OS X Character Palette. This utility that lets you select symbols and special characters visually from all the text symbols installed on your computer. It's a really amazing tool, so don't miss your chance and find out how to use it on Apple Mac OS Character Palette.
This applet can really help you. It has got all the symbols, so it's got all the heart signs aswell.
On Linux
Keyboard codes
If we're talking about non-handy Linux device (not Android mobile), there's a really cool way to type all the Unicode symbols on your Linux system. You can type any possible Unicode character with Unicode hex codes. Read the reference I made to find out how you can do this.
With this method you can type all the heart symbols and all the other possible text symbols.
There actually are 3 different ways to type symbols on Linux with a keyboard. But only Unicode hex codes can produce heart text symbols.
Following table contains Unicode codes of heart text characters. You'll need them for the Unicode hex codes.
| Unicode hex code | Symbol |
| 2665 | ♥ |
| 2764 | ❤ |
| 2765 | ❥ |
| 2763 | ❣ |
| 2766 | ❦ |
| 2767 | ❧ |
Character map
Character map is a program that displays all possible text symbols. You can choose some, and copy them to where you want them to be. It can even help you with the keyboard codes I just wrote about, as you can also look up Unicode symbol codes with it.
Because, Linux has different interfaces, like KDE and GNOME, there are different charmap programs. And you can also download a java CharMap that works everywhere where Java RE is installed. Read about all of them.
In HTML
Following is a list of HTML entities for heart symbols. One of these text symbols ♥ has a simplified HTML entity.
| HTML entity | Symbol |
|---|---|
| ♥ | ♥ |
| ❤ | ❤ |
| ❥ | ❥ |
| ❣ | ❣ |
| ❦ | ❦ |
| ❧ | ❧ |



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