What 🖇️ means
Things held together: an attachment, a bundle, or a connection.
The picture is pure office: two paperclips linked the way they come out of a box when you grab a handful. The paperclip has stood for "attachment" since email programs started marking attached files with one, so 🖇️ next to a document name means "the file is with this" or "these papers belong together".
Hook two clips together and the clip stops being about one file and starts being about joining. People use 🖇️ for a collaboration, a partnership, a pair of friends, a playlist and the post it goes with, or anything they want to say is "linked". Some people also drop it into bios and captions purely as a tidy, stationery-flavoured decoration.
Drawings differ by platform as of 2026: some show exactly two clips, others a short chain of three, in grey or in colour. It is one character either way.
What does it mean when someone sends 🖇️?
Usually "here is the thing that goes with this".
Read the words around it. After "report", "photos" or "see" it points at an attachment or a related message. After "you and me", "us" or two names it means you belong together: a warm, slightly bookish way to say "we're a pair" that friends use as freely as couples do. It is not a flirting code, and it carries no edge, so nobody should feel awkward receiving it.
Plain and work-safe; about people it is warm and friendly rather than romantic.
Sent alone it never says whether a file is missing or you are being sweet.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsDon't confuse it with
3Combination ideas
2Worth knowing
- 🖇️ reached Unicode in a batch of symbols rescued from Microsoft's old Wingdings fonts, which is why it started life as a plain black outline rather than a colourful emoji.
- During the German occupation of Norway in the Second World War, Norwegians pinned paperclips to their lapels as a quiet sign of standing together; the occupiers eventually banned it.
Questions people ask
3Is 🖇️ the same as the attachment paperclip?
Nearly. Email programs use a single clip, which is 📎; 🖇️ is two clips joined, so it works for attachments too but says "these belong together" more strongly.
Why does 🖇️ show as a plain grey outline or a box on my device?
Because it began as a text symbol. Older systems and some fonts draw it as a black-and-white glyph, and very old ones may show a box. It is still the right character.
Is 🖇️ flirty?
Not by itself. About two people it means "we go together", which friends and couples both use. Any romance comes from the words around it.
How to type 🖇️
:linked_paperclips:the common shortcode; support varies by platform.🖇️Codes and encoding2 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.