USA Emoji

🇺🇸 the US flag emoji is not a picture stored in Unicode. It is two invisible-looking letters, the regional indicators 🇺 and 🇸, which phones and Macs draw together as the Stars and Stripes. That is why the same flag shows up as the plain letters US on most Windows PCs: Windows' emoji font has no country flags. The flag still copies and pastes correctly, and anyone reading on a phone sees it. 🇺🇲, the flag of the U.S. Outlying Islands, is drawn with the same Stars and Stripes on most phones, which is why people sometimes call it the second US flag.

Around the flag sit the national symbols. 🦅 Eagle stands for the bald eagle, on the Great Seal since 1782 and made the official national bird by law in December 2024. 🦬 Bison became the national mammal in 2016. 🗽 Statue of Liberty means New York, immigration and freedom, and ⭐ stands in for the fifty stars on the flag. 🏛️ is used for the Capitol, Congress and Washington, D.C., 🗳️ for voting and Election Day, and 🫵 for the old "I want YOU" Uncle Sam poster. 🌎 is the globe that shows the Americas.

The United States also has flags for its territories: 🇵🇷 Puerto Rico, 🇬🇺 Guam, 🇻🇮 the U.S. Virgin Islands, 🇦🇸 American Samoa and 🇲🇵 the Northern Mariana Islands. People from there often pair the two: 🇵🇷🇺🇸.

4th of July emoji and other American holidays

The 4th of July emoji set is fireworks and the flag: 🎆 fireworks, 🎇 sparkler and 🧨 firecracker, with 🇺🇸 and 🦅, plus the cookout that goes with Independence Day, 🌭 and 🍔. The same red-white-and-blue mood fits Memorial Day in May and Veterans Day on November 11, where 🎖️ military medal and 🫡 saluting face say thank you to those who served.

Halloween as most of the world now knows it, with trick-or-treating door to door, took its shape in the US: 🎃 jack-o'-lantern, 👻 ghost, 🦇 bat, 🕸️ spider web and 🍬 candy. Thanksgiving, on the fourth Thursday of November, is 🦃 turkey, 🥧 pumpkin pie, 🍂 autumn leaves and 🌽 corn. In New Orleans, Mardi Gras is 🎭 masks and ⚜️ the fleur-de-lis, the city's emblem and the logo of its football team, the Saints, usually sent with 💜💚💛, the Mardi Gras colors.

Super Bowl Sunday is not an official holiday, but it behaves like one: 🏈 with 🍗 wings, 🍕 and 🏟️ for the game itself.

American food, sports and places in emoji

The classic American table in emoji is diner and cookout food: 🍔 hamburger, 🌭 hot dog, 🍟 fries, 🍗 fried chicken or wings, 🥩 steak and barbecue, 🥓 bacon and 🥞 pancakes for breakfast. 🍩 donuts, 🍪 chocolate chip cookies, 🥯 New York bagels, 🍿 movie popcorn and 🥜 peanut butter fill in the rest. Some emoji belong to a region: 🍕 for New York or Chicago pizza, 🦞 for Maine lobster, 🍑 for Georgia, the Peach State, 🍎 for New York, the Big Apple, and 🌮 for Tex-Mex and Taco Tuesday.

Unicode calls 🏈 American Football, and together with ⚾ baseball, 🏀 basketball and 🏒 ice hockey it makes up the big four leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL). ⚽ soccer keeps growing, ⛳ golf, 🏇 the Kentucky Derby, 🏎️ NASCAR and the Indy 500, 🥍 lacrosse, a game first played by Indigenous peoples of North America, and 🥏 the Frisbee all have their fans. 🧢 the baseball cap is game-day wear far beyond the ballpark.

Places get their own shorthand: 🌃 and 🏙️ for the New York skyline, 🚕 its yellow cabs, 🌉 a bridge at night that many emoji fonts draw like San Francisco's Golden Gate, 🎬 for Hollywood, 🎰 for Las Vegas and 🎢 for theme parks. 🏞️ means the national parks, 🌵 the Southwest desert, 🌴 California and Florida, 🐻 the grizzlies and black bears of the West, and 🌺 🌋 🤙 Hawaiʻi. 🛣️ with 🛻 is the great American road trip, and 🚀 🧑‍🚀 🌕 recalls Apollo 11 landing on the Moon in 1969. Country and western is 🤠 👢 🐎 with 👖 blue jeans, and American music in five emoji is 🎸 rock and roll, 🎷 🎺 jazz, 🪕 bluegrass and country, and 🎤 hip hop.

Dollar sign $, cents ¢ and American units ℉ ′ ″

The US dollar is written $ before the number with no space ($20, $4.99) and cents with ¢ after it (99¢). $ is Shift + 4 on every US keyboard. ¢ is harder: on Windows hold Alt and type 0162 on the number pad, on a Mac press Option + 4. For chats there are emoji too: 💵 dollar banknote for cash and payday, 💲 heavy dollar sign as a price tag, and 🪙 coin for change and savings. More currencies are in the Money collection.

The US measures temperature in Fahrenheit. Most people write 75°F with the degree sign ° (Alt + 0176 on Windows, Option + Shift + 8 on a Mac), and ℉ is the single-character version. Heights are written in feet and inches: 5′ 10″ uses the prime ′ and double prime ″, the proper marks for what most people type as ' and ".

Spanish and Hawaiian letters: how to type ñ, á and ʻ on a US keyboard

The United States has no official language written into federal law, though a 2025 executive order named English as the official language. English needs only the plain A–Z, apart from borrowed words like café, résumé and jalapeño. Spanish is the second language of the country: CLDR estimates about 33 million speakers, and in Puerto Rico it is an official language alongside English. Spanish uses ñ (año, "year", is not ano), the acute accents á é í ó ú that mark stress (está, sí, canción), ü in words like pingüino, and the opening marks ¿ and ¡: ¿Qué tal? ¡Feliz cumpleaños!

To type them on a Windows PC, hold Alt and type on the number pad 0241 for ñ, 0209 for Ñ, 0225 á, 0233 é, 0237 í, 0243 ó, 0250 ú, 0252 ü, 0191 ¿ and 0161 ¡. With the US-International keyboard layout, type ' then a vowel for á, and ~ then n for ñ. On a Mac, Option + N then N gives ñ, Option + E then a vowel gives the acute accent, Option + U then u gives ü, Option + 1 gives ¡ and Option + Shift + ? gives ¿. On a phone, long-press the letter. Our Spanish collection has the full alphabet.

Hawaiian is an official language of the State of Hawaiʻi, next to English. It writes two marks that change meaning: the ʻokina ʻ, a glottal stop that counts as a consonant, and the kahakō, a line over a long vowel: ā ē ī ō ū. The state's own name is Hawaiʻi, and islands are spelled Oʻahu, Kauaʻi and Lānaʻi. The ʻokina is its own character, U+02BB, not the curly apostrophe ‘, and in HTML it is ʻ. Macs and iPhones offer a Hawaiian keyboard; elsewhere, copy it from here.