What is thisJ

August 2, 2012 8:33 AM

A person I correspond with ends every email with the letter J. At first, I thought it was just a typo, but now I see it's consistent over dozens of emails. Now I'm curious if it's a thing, or if maybe it's some artifact of some unencoded character, or what.

This is generally how it will occur:

Hi myname,

Thanks for the blah blah blah! I will let everyone know about the blah blah blah. I'll be in touchJ

Best,
hername

Capital J, no space, no ending punctuation.

It looks like her (work) email gets routed through gmail (to my gmail address, which I check on gmail). The font of her emails appears to be the default outlook reply (blue text, whatever non-gmail font that is), but nothing really special.

As soon as I realized it wasn't an errant typo, I thought maybe she was using it to sign off, since my name starts with a J. But she does it on other emails that are sent to multiple folks who don't have J names.

For what it's worth, I've met this person in real life and she has both of her hands and all of her fingers and appears to have all of her mental faculties.

Anyway, I'm very curious. Any ideas what might be going on here?

posted by phunniemee to grab bag (11 answers total)

It's how the smiley-face emoticon is translated from a symbol to text.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 8:34 AM on August 2, 2012 [24 favorites]

Sweetie Darling has it. When i send an email from Outlook and include a happy face it gets translated in to a capital J.
posted by PuppetMcSockerson at 8:35 AM on August 2, 2012 [2 favorites]

Well, that was easy. Thanks!

(Also, holy balls does this lady use a lot of smileys.)
posted by phunniemee at 8:37 AM on August 2, 2012 [13 favorites]

Wow! I always wondered this but never thought to look it up or ask. Thanks!
posted by k8lin at 8:44 AM on August 2, 2012 [2 favorites]

That's exactly it -- which I discovered when someone replied to me and I was all, "I didn't put a J there?" It shows up properly in the e-mail itself, but is a J in the pop-up preview.
posted by mgar at 9:04 AM on August 2, 2012

Yeah, it took me a while to figure that one out too -- I use Outlook at work so when someone sends me an email with a smiley the alert shows the J.
posted by sm1tten at 9:07 AM on August 2, 2012

It it actually caused by Outlook using AutoCorrect to change ":)" into a Wingding font character that then gets converted into a J. You can fix it if you use Outlook.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:10 AM on August 2, 2012 [5 favorites]

hmm, this answers a question I never thought to ask. Does anyone know what, if anything, translates to z? Or to jz?
posted by peep at 9:16 AM on August 2, 2012

According to this table, a z could be either a Mac Command-key symbol, or a star and crescent, depending on capitalization. No idea why those would appear in an email.
posted by vasi at 9:42 AM on August 2, 2012

Is there a way to fix this in GMail? That is, when an Outlook user sends an email to me, is it possible to have the smiley rendered in some discernable fashion, rather than as a J?
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 10:12 AM on August 2, 2012

According to this table, a z could be either a Mac Command-key symbol, or a star and crescent, depending on capitalization. No idea why those would appear in an email.

I could see the star and crescent, under the right circumstances. An old acquantaince from college used to end his emails with "xp", long before Windows XP came out. I eventually realized it was the Greek letters chi and rho, the beginning of the word "Χριστός" ("Christ" in ancient Greek.) I only guessed because a superimposed chi and rho show up frequently on Episcopal altar dressings (and in lots of other denominations too, I imagine).
posted by McCoy Pauley at 10:33 AM on August 2, 2012 [1 favorite]