Blog / Character of the Week
Character of the Week
One character a week, tied to the day it belongs to β where it came from, what it means, and how to type it.
πΆ Β· International Dog Day The dog that was a character before it was an emoji August 26 was picked because it is the day a ten-year-old's family brought a dog home from the shelter, and the day it became is about working and rescued dogs rather than cute ones. Unicode sorted its own dogs along much the same line β πΆ counted as an emoji years before π did, and then π got the job.π· Β· World Photography Day Your phone is drawing you a picture of the camera it replaced August 19 is the day France published Daguerre's process and gave photography away β to every country but Britain, which had been quietly patented five days earlier. The right day for π·, a glyph shaped by phone screens, showing the machine phones retired.β Β· International Lefthanders Day The arrow that never turns around August 13 belongs to the one in ten who write with the hand that smudges. A good day for β β the character Unicode's bidirectional algorithm pointedly refuses to flip.β Β· Infinity Day Your keyboard's infinity is a promise about paper August 8 is 8/8, two digits that only have to fall over to make the shape. But the βΎοΈ on an emoji keyboard is not U+221E β it is a librarians' compliance mark for paper that refuses to rot.β Β· Pi Approximation Day The mark that won't say how close Twenty-two divided by seven lands near Ο but not on it. July 22 is that fraction written as a date, and the right day for β β the one member of the equality family that never states its own error bar.