eMJA: Email “icon-ography” for health professionals

Biji T Kurien

Senior Research Scientist, Arthritis and Immunology, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, 825 NE 13th Street, Oklahoma City, OK 73104, USA. biji-kurienATomrf.ouhsc.edu

To the Editor: The smiley icon “ :) ” has been widely used to convey amusement, mirth or jollity in casual email communications. However, there seems to be a lack of simple icons for use by health professionals as email shorthand in different scenarios. I therefore submit the symbols shown in the Box for use by doctors and others involved in health care. All are derived by typing a combination of characters of various font sizes and other features (colour, superscript, subscript, italics, and bold), and all are in Times New Roman font except when stated otherwise.

Note that it would be highly inadvisable to use a spell check feature in conjunction with these icons.1

Email icons (“emoticons”) for the health profession

Symbol

Meaning

Bearded doctor with stethoscope around neck

Curly-haired (red-haired) doctor/scientist with big moustache

Nurse (face) [Characters: { in red, ital, f12; space; colon in black, bold, ital, Sp, f12; space; ” in red, bold, f8;) in red, bold, ital, f8.]

Nurse (whole body) [Characters: { in red, ital, f12; space; colon in black, bold, ital, Sp, f12; space; ” in red, bold, f8;) in red, bold, ital, f8; = in yellow, f8; { in red bold f12; 3 in red f9; two colons in red, bold, f10; \ in red, ital, f8; = in green, f28; \ in green, bold, Sb, f8; = in dark red, Sb, f16; / in red, bold, Sb, f8.]

Bearded doctor/scientist awestruck on having article accepted in MJA

Bearded doctor/scientist awestruck on learning of receipt of Nobel Prize

Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation [Characters for lips: “ in Sb, f11.]

Identical twins

Whole body x-ray [Characters: 8 in f9; space; O in f10; hyphen in f12; { in f12; | in f12; | in f11; | in f10; | in f8; () in f8; five colons in f12; full stop in f12; / in Sp, f12; / in f12. All in bold; convert font to white and highlight characters in black.]

Acromegaly and gigantism (same as for twins, but use Courier New)

Smoking [Characters for cigarette: [ and ] in bold, ital, f10; ~ in f24.]

Obesity

Healthy laboratory mice (Courier font)

Dead laboratory mice

Concerned doctors/scientists discussing experimental failure

ital = italics. Sp = superscript. Sb = subscript. f = font.