For years, I’ve received emails that have capital ‘J’s thrown in at the end of seemingly random sentences. It’s never been a big deal, but it has always baffled me.
For example, I just received an email that contained the following bit:
Ha, I didn’t mean to reply to everyone! I am glad I didn’t say anything bad. J Thank you for…
What in the world is that J doing there?
I’ve speculated all this time of what people could mean. At first, I thought that it was a short for “I’m joking,” but it would only sometimes make sense in that context. The other odd thing is that the J is always rendered in a different font than the rest of the text.
I would claim that this mystery has kept me up some nights, but that would be just a little bit more than a standard exaggeration.
Finally, today I stumbled upon an answer. Not only does it explain why the J would appear in contexts that would both be joking and not joking, but it also explains the odd font deal. If I had been observant or caring enough, I might have noticed another pattern, the odd appearance of J only happened when the sender sent the message from Outlook.
The simple answer to the crazy mystery of the ‘J’s is that Microsoft uses a Wingding to render a smily in Outlook. The Wingding happyface happens to be at the same position as a J in the standard ASCII sets. So, on all clients other than Outlook, it renders as an out-of-place looking J.
Yay! Another example of Microsoft not following standards. Why use the near universal understanding that ‘:’ followed by ‘)’ is a code for happyface and can be interpreted by software if desired when you can just use one of your proprietary fonts instead?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an anti-Microsoft zealot, I just wish that the software from Microsoft played nicer with the other children in the playground. Don’t even get me started on “smart” quotes and how many companies, not just Microsoft, have dropped the ball on that one creating an amazing nightmare for humble coders like me that have to deal with their mess.
Did I help you?
Haha, thank you for explanation. I still cannot get why Microsoft did it in such a way. You know, sometimes there are some troubles because of “standard” emoticons (like when you want to type some source code examples), but this must be real horror.
Ah, thanks! This has been bugging the crap out of me. Of course it would be a Microsoft problem. lol
Thanks!
Thanks for clearing that up for me!! It’s been driving me crazy!! Yet another reason not to use Outlook. (or maybe their plan is to get us ALL to use Outlook…)
Wow, this J was starting to annoy me not knowing what it was about, on a sidenote can people just not use emoticons in a professional business related email?…
Thanks for this explanation. I’ve seen it appear both as an upper case j “J” as well as a character that *looks* like an extra tall upper case j, but with the hook that extends below the baseline.
Easy is hard for MicroSOFT.
On the other hand, perhaps we start using capital J as a sarcastic emoticon given this history.
Thank you for solving the mystery! Now I know what was meant!!!
Old thread, but found an extension that “fixes” these symbols in Thunderbird at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/smiley-fixer/
😉
I’ve been wondering what has been going on with all these J’s of late (I’m in Mozambique and I thought it was some sort of Portuguese/Brazilian code meaning “LOL” or similar — close.)
What it really means is that for all the time I’ve been in the States nobody I know puts things like smiley faces in their emails, which is why I don’t remember seeing that back home. Here apparently that’s considered ok, so now they’re popping up all the time.
Thanks for solving the mystery!
c
Thank you so much real piece of intelligence you have done there
This has bugged me no end being an apple user – THANX.
Thank you so much! J LOL!
This has been niggling me for YEARS. I too thought it was meant to be “Joking” but that never seemed quite right. Thank You! J
4 and 1/2 years later and your post is still the top hit when I google “odd looking J symbol in emails,” which I finally got around to doing. I figured it was a smiley face but didn’t know WHY. Thanks for the explanation.
Of course I have been wondering what the Js were. Of course I am doubly illiterate: I have always wondered what Outlook is; somehow I thought it was a Microsoft calendar program (which would make sense, from the name). I finally realised from this post that Outlook is the thing for writing emails, like the Mail program I have been using on Macs for the last 10 or 15 years.
Ha! Here it is nearly a year later and I’m finally tired of wondering just what the J’s and L’s mean and Googled it and got this page. Can’t believe I haven’t really noticed it much before. But a fellow board member in my rescue group had just started using these in her emails and I couldn’t figure out why. I’m a Mac person, so I’ve not had anyone ask me about it, but I also make my smiley and sad faces like this: :-), 🙁 Don’t ask me why, but I guess I wanted a nose in there. So I’m wondering if adding that dash would over ride MS’s way of making the Wingding?
Hilarious! 😉
I’m not really sure as I haven’t used Outlook in a very long time. Maybe?
I used to use
:,)for smiley faces. I called him Bob. He has all sorts of poses:Thanks so much, Chris. Funny that you wrote this FIVE years ago, and I didn’t need it until TODAY. 2 co-workers just e-mailed me this afternoon, and I thought the 1st one was saying ‘joke’. But when the 2nd one wrote with the same ‘J’ I thought I would look it up on Google to see if was a “new fad” like the ‘hash tag’ thing — don’t wanna be ‘too behind’ ya know.
Well, now I realize it’s just a smiley. Whew! Thanks again for your much needed public service. Just to think that I’ve never seen it until today though…after 5 years of you writing this…
Thanks for this as well.
Although it is odd that Wingdings doesn’t seem to render on Firefox. It shows up as correctly as a smiley face on IE and Chrome; but not on my FF (version 28).
Anyone else?
This page on mozilla.org has the answer. To add some more information, I believe that the Wingdings font itself indicates that the glyphs in the file are not representative of the letters. Since Mozilla takes a hard line on standards, they decline use of the font since it is incapable of representing what it should: glyphs that render the letter.
Awesome. Thanks!
I thought the J stood for Jesus and maybe it was a religious thing. I have friends that put JMJ on emails, meaning Jesus, Mary, Joseph. Lol! But, that didn’t really make sense!
JMJ? Interesting. That’s (smile)(bomb)(smile).
Epic.
Thanks for this post, btw. I’ve been wondering for many years about this mysterious “J” and finally got around to looking it up today. You’re my hero for the week ^_^
Hi – thanx so much for sharing this! A friend keeps sending me text messages with JJJ on them… looked it up ant the first result was telling me it means “Australian radio station” – truly thought she was going mad before I found this!
I’m not a mental health professional, but this explanation should not be considered evidence that your friend is not mentally unbalanced.
What does the L symbol mean? Can’t find it in my searches. Thanks!
Frowny face. Source
Thanks, J
After months of corresponding with an overseas user of Js I had resigned it as a foreign quirk and had almost learned to ignore it.
This morning’s email from the vicar was the final straw.
I had to know, and you provided the explanation. THANK YOU!
Glad to help.
Ditto the last guy, finally got fed up with coworkers’ random ‘J’s and googled it. Figured it was something with Outlook. Thanks for your great explanation!
Thanks so much for solving this mystery. Stupid Microsoft. They want to rule the world, so maddening.
Finally!!! The mystery is solved!
Amazing investigation!!!!
Thanks for solving J
It is amazing, and annoying, that this problem that still persists in Outlook for Mac version 14.4.8.
Thank you for explaining why it exists.
This still happens, and it’s been bugging me for some time, so I googled for “sentences ending in J” or similar and found your blog entry. At last, now I know.
thanks
Brilliant! I only started seeing these recently and thought that perhaps it was a new fashionable emoticon, like a half smiley face or something. But you’ve now cracked this nut very eloquently, thanks J
Thank you so much for this mystery solved! It makes sense, indeed I think I always get those “J” from Outlook users!
Awesome! Yet another mystery solved! J
This too has puzzled me! Now I have the answer — very interesting! Thank you 🙂
Ow my, I really thought, in the first e-mail I recieved with that ‘J’, that it was a tipping mistake but cannot understand how it was possible as the ‘J’ letter was not so close from the point case… The second one I recieved brought me here! J
2016 and still dealing with it! 😀 Yay technology!
7 years on, and I find this to help with today’s problem. At least if you’re going to invent standards, stand by them obstinately!
mystery solved! Thank you, it’s driven me crazy for years!!!!
Thank you SO much for solving this mystery! My name is Jacob, so for a long time I thought people were just using my initial, but it seemed like a strange use. Now I know.
As a person whose name begins with J I often sign my personal emails with just that first letter. It baffled me when all these other emails came back from friends littered with J’s. Thanks for the info!
J
This post is still useful in 2016!
I keep getting Js from a lot of people 🙂 bad ux is everywhere…
Incredible. Thank you!
Thank you !!!!!
I have been confused by the recent “J’s” in my emails, too 🙂 !
🙂
🙂
🙂
-Irene.
helpful info
thanks J
Yes! Glad I found this. I’ve never seen this until recently and only coming from one person. I thought maybe it was an issue with international e-mail or something because the person whose e-mails had this J was from Denmark.
Thanks for solving the mystery, been baffling me aswell.
Just when I thought I couldn’t dislike Microsoft any more J
Wow. Here I am 4 years late to the party! Finally drove me crazy enough to look it up. As another user with a J name, I somehow thought it was for me, or else a really crooked smile. Now I know — thank you!
Chris- thanks for clearing this up. It’s driven me crazy for the last couple of years. I never took the time to look it up. I like you thought it meant joking. I realized this couldn’t be true based on the last email I received. There are some things people never joke about. 😉
VERY HELPFUL!!!!!! And great post! 🙂 : ) J
Dude, thank you. This has been driving me nuts.