A symbol font maps ordinary letters to pictures. Unicode characters carry their own identity. The difference decides whether your text survives.
The short version
Start here if you only have one minute. The full guide below explains each point.
Symbol fonts store letters
The picture disappears with the font.
Unicode stores the symbol
It survives copying, searching and reading aloud.
Use fonts only in closed documents
Anything shared should use real characters.
01
What a symbol font actually does
A symbol font such as Wingdings maps ordinary letters to pictures. The letter J is stored in the file; the font simply draws a smiley face instead.
The stored text is still the letter. Change the font and the picture becomes the letter again, which is why a Wingdings document opened elsewhere reads as nonsense.
- The file stores letters, not symbols
- The picture exists only while that font is applied
- Copying the text gives you the letters back
02
What a Unicode character does instead
A Unicode symbol is its own character with its own identity. No font is required for it to remain what it is.
If the font lacks a drawing, you get an empty box rather than the wrong content. That is a visible failure rather than a silent one.
✦A symbol font fails silently and wrongly. A Unicode character fails visibly and honestly. The second is far easier to catch.
03
Where symbol fonts still make sense
Inside a single closed document that will only ever be opened with the font installed, they are fine and sometimes convenient.
Icon fonts on the web work the same way and have the same failure mode, which is why most teams moved to inline vector icons instead.
04
The accessibility failure
A screen reader reads the stored characters, not the drawn pictures. A Wingdings arrow is announced as the letter it really is.
There is no way to fix this from inside the font, which alone rules symbol fonts out of anything public.
05
Search and copy behaviour
Text in a symbol font is searchable as its underlying letters, which is never what anyone wants. Searching for an arrow finds nothing.
Unicode symbols are searchable as themselves, and copy into other applications intact.
06
The rule
Use Unicode characters for anything that leaves your machine. Use a symbol font only when the document, the font and the reader are all under your control.
In practice that means almost always Unicode, and symbol fonts as a legacy convenience rather than a design choice.
Two ways to get a picture into text
The stored content is what determines every downstream behaviour. The drawing is only ever temporary.
| Behaviour | Symbol font | Unicode character |
|---|---|---|
| What the file stores | An ordinary letter | The symbol itself |
| Without the font | Shows the wrong letter | Shows an empty box |
| Copied elsewhere | Becomes a letter | Stays the symbol |
| Read by a screen reader | As the letter | As the symbol |
| Found by search | As the letter | As the symbol |
Every row in the symbol font column describes the same underlying fact: the picture was never in the file. Only the letter was.
07
Copy the symbols discussed in this guide
This guide explains the topic. Use technical symbols for the main copyable set, compare it with aesthetic symbols, and browse cursive letter symbols for another useful angle. Each collection includes searchable Unicode names and HTML references.
08
Questions, answered
Why does Wingdings text turn into random letters?+
Because those letters are what the file actually contains. The font was drawing pictures over them, and without the font the real characters show through.
Are icon fonts the same thing?+
Structurally yes. They map characters to drawings, and they share the same failure mode when the font does not load.
Can screen readers read symbol fonts?+
They read the stored characters, not the drawn pictures, so a symbol font is announced as whatever letters it really contains.
09
Sources and review notes
Examples were checked as plain Unicode text and reviewed for readability, normalization and likely font variation.