No, the one after 'has flown in'. But I realise now it's one of the Windows Alt characters - 'charmap.exe' shows ☺☻☼ and a few other characters I'd forgotten about.

what's a "windows alt character" ?

the character after "has flown in " is a square on my computer is it different on yours?

This gets weirder - I've just looked closely at the b/w smiley I can see, and it's larger and got a square mouth - a grimace. And that's not a Windows character at all!!!!
Here's that bit as I see it:
has flown in😱

If all you get is a square empty shape, that means you don't have the font to show the character correctly. So you've not got the same basic font set I have. But I can't see how people can use different font sets on DS - it's a default for the web site. For example:
here's a pasted piece from a document I'm working on -
[FONT=&quot]The following is a chronology of the events
[/FONT]
In my Word document, that's in Calibri 11pt, but the DS message box has defaulted it to the site standard. If I change it to Algerian 11pt, this is what happens in the message -
[FONT=Algerian]The following is a chronology of the events[/FONT].
Nothing. You can't change the default font for a message.
So how the heck did that smiley happen?

I had this problem last night with a post on the music forum. I quoted something that was in bold, and the [ quote ] bit was bolded in my post, showed onscreen, and split the quote into multiple blue boxes. When I altered it in the preview edit box, it just came back the same. I only sorted it by deleting the quotes entirely and putting them back in by hand.

The above scribble is why it's rubbish putting together a post in Word first and pasting it in. You get millions of stupid bracketed code things scattered through the post which have to be cut out

Windows Alt characters are the ancient mystical way to access characters that aren't on the keyboard - umlaut characters, Old English, fractions, scientific, Arabic etc. If you have a numeric keypad you can hold down the Alt key and type a 3-figure number which corresponds to a character, and it goes into your document. See http://symbolcodes.tlt.psu.edu/accents/codealt.html

The easiest way to do those though are by using the Windows system programme 'charmap.exe' from your Windows 'run program' option on the start menu. Brings up a little box with all the available characters and you can cut and paste them. Like this:
ᾫ ὤ Ố ᵺ ٸ

That smiley is going to drive me bloody mad, I know it!
I'm getting a headache

BTW- that smiley is not an emoticon - I've deliberately put 10 smileys in. If it was one, the message would have been rejected for too many smileys.

i still see a square!!!
i am using windows 8 (much to my shame)
and *goes to look* have 243 fonts.... Word 10
so is the windows alt different to the character map then?
i use character map a lot to get © ° and various accents for french...... frappé

on here they like the "[quote]" in upper case for it to work ie

if i press alt and numbers on my keyboard i get nothing except a musical note playing

i guess that what comes from being my own planetary system

ps calibri is a nice clean font

what is it about old men that they can't resist a blow job joke if you ask about plums????

Blow me!

*bangs head on table*
i wanted to use the
but i feel that's just asking for trouble....

You asked for it! and ye shall find!

do you count as an "old man" though?

Well, I can get past 10.

was just checking the wiki entry for gussie fink nottle to see if he was "a bright young thing"...it was inconclusive.....

Fing?

a bright young fing?

A frazzled fogeyish fing.

More to the point, why are you harassing old men about their plumming?

i got given some plums (fruit) not having ever cooked with them i posted on facebook if anyone had any ideas what i could do with them.....i didn't get many recipes as replies....

Just as well you did not solicit recipes for meat and two veg!

well i'd know what to do with them

In a plum sauce?

mais oui.....oooo could make plum sauce and get some pork or duck!!! thanks Fink!!!

Plump for it!

So somehow your standard Windows font must be different to mine. Heaven alone knows how or why.


No - it accesses the same characters.
Sorry, I must have misread and thought you didn't know charmap.

I don't think it makes a difference. I never use it - but then I don't use the quote button, I always type it.


Not the steam-powered Yamaha, the computer
Mind you, looks impressive rising through the living room carpet. Pity about having to move all the furniture back from the heap around the walls every time.


Love it - it stays neat even when at small resolution, and doesn't thicken up much when bolded.

ps- Windows 8? Banished.

this is an experiment:


you're right all this time i've been going to the effort of caps locking

did you get all your work finished on your birthday?

Eventually! Had to transcribe 2,000 words and then mould it into some sort of shape today.

Finished Gaudy Night?

oh no i envisaged you up all night but hoped some miracle occurred and you got some chill out time....

....not quite i've been rationing myself because i'm so near the end and i don't want it to finish!!!!