Wingdings

[wing-ding]

Wingdings are a series of fonts which render letters as a variety of symbols. They were originally developed in 1990 by Microsoft by combining glyphs from Lucida Icons, Arrows, and Stars licensed from Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. Certain versions of the font's copyright string includes an attribution to Type Solutions, Inc., the maker of a tool used to hint the font.

Wingdings

Wingdings is a TrueType dingbat font included in all versions of Microsoft Windows starting with version 3.1.

The Wingdings trademark is owned by Microsoft, and the glyph order was patented. This font contains many largely recognized shapes and gestures as well some recognized world symbols, such as the Star of David and the symbols of the Zodiac.

Wingdings 2

Wingdings 2 is a TrueType dingbat font distributed, for example, with Microsoft Office. The font was developed in 1990 by Type Solutions, Inc. Now the copyright holder is Microsoft Corp. Among the features of Wingdings 2 include 16 forms of the index, Enclosed Alphanumerics from 0 to 10, multiple forms of ampersand and interrobang, several geometric shapes and an asterism. The font is not mapped to Unicode.

Wingdings 3

Wingdings 3 is a TrueType dingbat font distributed together with Microsoft Office.

This font was originally developed in 1990 by Type Solutions, Inc, but now the copyright holder is Microsoft Corporation. Wingdings 3 consists entirely of arrows.

Controversies

Wingdings has a history of controversy. In 1992, only days after the release of Windows 3.1, it was discovered that the character sequence "NYC" in Wingdings was rendered as a skull and crossbones symbol, Star of David, and thumbs up gesture (NYC). This could be interpreted as a message of approval of killing Jews, especially those from New York City. Microsoft strongly denied this was intentional, and insisted that the final arrangement of the glyphs in the font was largely random. (The character sequence "NYC" in the later-released Webdings font, in turn, is rendered as eye, heart, and city skyline, which could be interpreted as "I Love New York City". Microsoft has stated that this is intentional.)

An urban legend that spread after the September 11, 2001 attacks was that if the sequence "Q33NY" is typed in Wingdings, the Q becomes an aircraft, the threes become lined documents (resembling skyscrapers), the N becomes a skull and crossbones, and the Y becomes the Star of David. The "NY" stands for New York, and "Q33" allegedly was the designation of one of the aircraft. However, the theory that this has any valid non-accidental connection with the attacks falls apart under scrutiny: none of the aircraft used on that day bore the designation of Q33; the crucial aircraft/flight number is merely contrived for the purpose of this claimed connection.

Despite these controversies, the font has remained in Windows through Windows Vista.