Writing emoji meanings: ✍️ 📝 ✏️ 🖊️ and what each one says
Writing Hand is the writing emoji in the plainest sense: a hand holding a pen over a line of text. It means "writing", "signing", "author" or "taking notes", and in chat it is the shortest way to say "noted, I'm writing that down". It comes in the five skin tones, which your keyboard offers with a long-press. Memo is the picture of the result, a pencil over a sheet with a few lines on it, and it is the emoji people actually type for a note, a to-do, a reminder or homework. The lines on it are scribble, not words, on every platform.
The pens differ more than they look. Pencil is the school and sketching tool, and the one you mean for "draft" or "edit": many apps use a pencil for their edit button. Pen is a ballpoint, the everyday pen for forms and signatures. Fountain Pen and Black Nib are the formal pair, for contracts, calligraphy, literature and "the pen is mightier". Crayon says children's drawing or colouring; Paintbrush leans toward art and brush calligraphy, and Feather stands in for a quill when the writing is old, poetic or fantasy. Their Unicode names give the game away: are officially Lower Left Ballpoint Pen, Lower Left Fountain Pen, Lower Left Paintbrush and Lower Left Crayon, after the angle they are drawn at.
Note emoji, notebook emoji and journal emoji
For a note emoji, Memo is the default, with Spiral Notepad as the reporter's pad and Clipboard for a checklist or a form you fill in. For a notebook emoji you have three: Notebook is the plain composition book, Notebook with Decorative Cover is the pretty one people pick as a journal emoji or diary, and Ledger is the account book for budgets, logs and bookkeeping. Locked with Pen is a nice touch for a private diary or a signed and sealed document.
Journaling and bullet-journal posts mix these with the paper trail: Bookmark Tabs for sticky tabs and sections, Bookmark for "saved for later", Label for tags, Pushpin for anything pinned and Paperclip or Linked Paperclips for attachments. A planner spread is Calendar, Tear-Off Calendar or Spiral Calendar next to , and ideas get Light Bulb or Thought Balloon before they are written down. For reading rather than writing, see the Book & Reading Emoji and School & Study Emoji collections.
Paper emoji: pages, scrolls, folders and the desk
The paper emoji are easy to confuse. Page Facing Up is a clean document, the one to use for a file, a CV or "attached". Page with Curl is the same sheet with a curled corner, used for a contract, a form or a long message. Scroll is parchment: diplomas, old manuscripts, rules, lore, and the record of a long story. Where notes end up is File Folder, Open File Folder, Card Index Dividers, Card Index, Card File Box and File Cabinet; where drafts end up is Wastebasket.
Desk tools round the set out: Straight Ruler and Triangular Ruler for drafting, geometry and neat margins, Scissors for cutting and pasting the old way, and Round Pushpin, which looks like a note pin but mostly means a map location. Letter writing has Envelope, Love Letter and Envelope with Arrow, and typing has Keyboard, Laptop and Printer; the full sets live in the Mail & Email Emoji and Computer Emoji collections.
Writing symbols you can type as text:
If a colour emoji is too loud, or the field you are typing into strips emoji, use the plain-text writing symbols. and are pencils from the 1993 Dingbats block, is the Lower Left Pencil that never became an emoji, is the outline White Nib that pairs with , and is a left-handed writing hand. is a plain pushpin. They take the colour of the surrounding text, so edit or notes sits neatly in a heading, a nickname or a bullet journal.
The page and note icons (note, note page, note pad) and (document, page, pages) come in a written version and a blank one, and , and show a document with text, with text and a picture, and with a picture only. are folders, is a book, is the back of an envelope and a pen over a stamped envelope, the letter being signed. All of these were added in Unicode 7.0 in 2014 so that text set in the old Wingdings and Webdings fonts could be preserved, which is why they look like icons rather than emoji and why some fonts still don't have them.
For lists and to-dos in plain text, is the empty box, and the ticked ones, the crossed one, with as loose marks. Bullet journals and notes also lean on •, and ‣ for bullets, … for a trailing thought, § and ¶ for sections and paragraphs, † and ‡ for footnotes, ※ for a side remark and ⁂ for a break between parts. More of these are in the Bullet Point & Divider Symbols and Check Mark Symbols collections, and the quotes and dashes writers need are in Quotation Mark Symbols and Dash & Hyphen Symbols.
How to use writing emoji in text, notes and bios
In a group chat, or alone means "noted" or "writing it down"; is the playful "on it". is "done and ticked off", a reminder, a question about the homework. Writers, journalists, students and teachers put , or in a bio to say what they do, and alone reads as literary. For a signature or a contract, or is the usual pair.
Notes apps and Discord channel names take one emoji each: for notes, for a journal, for a checklist, for an archive, for ideas. Keep notes and planner captions to two or three characters, or , so the text stays readable. If you want the in a different skin tone, long-press it on your phone keyboard; on a computer, paste the base emoji and add the tone from the emoji picker.
Symbols
91Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Text symbols: pencils, pens and pins
plain characters that take the colour of your text
How to use them
6 situationsClick to copyWriting & Notes Emoji combos
15Worth knowing
- Writing Hand has been in Unicode since version 1.1 in 1993, in the Dingbats block next to and , but it only became a colour emoji with Emoji 1.0 in 2015, and it gained skin tones at the same time.
- are officially named Lower Left Ballpoint Pen, Lower Left Fountain Pen, Lower Left Paintbrush and Lower Left Crayon. They came from the Wingdings font in Unicode 7.0 (2014); their sibling Lower Left Pencil was left out of the emoji set, so it stays a plain text symbol.
- is officially called Memo, not Note or Notepad, which is why typing :memo: finds it on Slack, Discord and GitHub.
- The little icons and their blank twins were encoded only so documents written in Wingdings and Webdings could be converted to proper Unicode text without losing their pictures.
- Feather is one of the newest characters here, from Emoji 13.0 in 2020; there is still no dedicated quill emoji, so it is the one writers use.
Questions people ask
8How do I copy and paste writing emoji?
Tap or click any emoji in the grid above, such as , or , and it is copied. Paste it into a message, a note, a bio or a document with CtrlV, CmdV or a long-press.
What does the hand with pen emoji mean?
Writing Hand means writing, signing or taking notes. In chat it says "noted" or "I'm writing that down"; in a bio it says writer or author. It is also used jokingly when someone is about to write a long rant.
What is the note emoji?
Memo is the note emoji: a pencil over a sheet of paper with lines. Spiral Notepad, Clipboard and Notebook are the alternatives when you mean a pad, a checklist or a whole notebook.
What does the notes emoji say?
Nothing. The lines on Memo and on Page Facing Up are scribbles drawn to look like writing, and no platform puts readable words on them.
Is there a journal emoji?
There is no emoji named journal. People use Notebook with Decorative Cover for a diary or journal, Notebook for a plain one and Ledger for a log or budget book; Locked with Pen adds "private".
What is the pen emoji called?
is simply Pen, officially Lower Left Ballpoint Pen. is Fountain Pen, is Black Nib and is Pencil. All four were made emoji in 2015.
Is there a pencil text symbol?
Yes: Lower Right Pencil, Upper Right Pencil and Lower Left Pencil are plain text characters, and without the emoji selector shows as a text pencil in many fonts. White Nib and Left Writing Hand are text symbols too.
What are good note taking emoji combos?
for taking notes, for noted and done, for journaling, for an idea written down, for a deadline and for a checklist in plain text.
