Using Emojis in HTML
Emojis are characters from the UTF-8 character set: 😄 😍 💗
What are Emojis?
Emojis look like images, or icons, but they are not.
They are letters (characters) from the UTF-8 (Unicode) alphabet.
UTF-8 covers almost all of the characters and symbols in the world.
The HTML charset Attribute
To display an HTML page correctly, a web browser must know the character set used in the page.
This is specified in the <meta> tag:
<meta charset="UTF-8">
If not specified, UTF-8 is the default character set in HTML.
UTF-8 Characters
Many UTF-8 characters cannot be typed on a keyboard, but they can always be displayed using numbers (called entity numbers):
- A is 65
- B is 66
- C is 67
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>I will display A B C</p>
<p>I will display A B C</p>
</body>
</html>
Try it Yourself »
Example Explained
The <meta charset="UTF-8"> element defines the character set.
The characters A, B, and C, are displayed by the numbers 65, 66, and 67.
To let the browser understand that you are displaying a character, you must start the entity number with &# and end it with ; (semicolon).
Emoji Characters
Emojis are also characters from the UTF-8 alphabet:
- 😄 is 128516
- 😍 is 128525
- 💗 is 128151
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<h1>My First Emoji</h1>
<p>😀</p>
</body>
</html>
Try it Yourself »
Since Emojis are characters, they can be copied, displayed, and sized just like any other character in HTML.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<h1>Sized Emojis</h1>
<p style="font-size:48px">
😀 😄 😍 💗
</p>
</body>
</html>
Try it Yourself »
| Emoji | Value |
|---|---|
| 🗻 | #128507; |
| 🗼 | #128508; |
| 🗽 | #128509; |
| 🗾 | #128510; |
| 🗿 | #128511; |
| 😀 | #128512; |
| 😁 | #128513; |
| 😂 | #128514; |
| 😃 | #128515; |
| 😄 | #128516; |
| 😅 | #128517; |
For a full list, please go to our HTML Emoji Reference.
The @charset CSS Rule
You can use the CSS @charset rule to specify the character encoding used in a style sheet:
Example
Set the encoding of the style sheet to Unicode UTF-8:
@charset "UTF-8";
Read more about the CSS @charset Rule in our CSS Reference.
