Dave, my friend has been posting their Facebook status updates using an old-style typeface (looks goth!). How the heck are they doing that and how can I also post updates that have different fonts than the normal one?
I’m trying to avoid making any jokes about MySpace and how it let anyone post anything in any format they wanted, which led to visual chaos! I remember trying to read content from other users where they had picked grey on black text or lime green on red (which completely messed with your eyes). Not to mention the flaming skulls, but that’s another story entirely!
In terms of more modern social media sites and similar, what you’re seeing is an artifact of how they support international languages. Regular text is generally “ASCII” and that’s been around since the dawn of computers. Modern systems support “ANSI” international standards so that all languages, even Arabic, Hebrew, and Thai, can be used and represented in apps and on Web pages. If you’ve ever seen completely incomprehensible search results, you’ve seen ANSI text.
What your friend is doing, therefore, is using an ASCII to ANSI conversion program or Website. Turns out that there are a number of them and they’re fun and quite easy to use. I like TextFancy.com. Let’s check it out…
FANCY FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATES
As it happens, I saw a status update in my Facebook newsfeed this morning that demonstrated exactly what you’re talking about:
The emoji are easy – both Windows and Mac have emoji galleries you can peruse, and Facebook also has its own list you can look through to find pirate flags, water drops, etc. But how did they do that fancy second line that says “Aye, she’d be openin’ her cursed gates to scallywags on March 18, 1967”?
Certainly there’s no help from Facebook itself: When I highlight a phrase in my own pending status update, it tries (very poorly) to match existing Pages, Groups, or individuals with what I typed.
TIME TO TRY TEXTFANCY.COM
There are a number of sites that offer equivalent features, but I really like TextFancy.com because it’s fun and a bit whimsical too. Here’s the home page:
Not sure any of those will work – in fact, any that have “HTM” will not work as part of a Facebook status update – but as you can see, the site’s chaotic fun!
For the first portion of my text, let’s check the “Convert” menu…
I did warn you that it’s a bit whimsical, right? 🙂 To flip text upside-down, “Flippers” is the choice, and that’s the last entry on this menu.
What’s not immediately obvious is that the text input box is at the top of the screen. It shows “Text Fancy”. I’ll paste in the text I want to flip upside-down and…
In this case it’s both flipped it upside-down (“mirrored” it) and reversed it. That works. It’s easy enough to click-and-drag to select the result that looks best then paste it into the Facebook status update window:
We’re getting there…
ABOUT THAT GOTHIC TYPEFACE
To convert your text to another typeface like Fraktur, the Gothic typeface that’s most commonly used, involves going to a different area in TextFancy: Convert > Font Styles. Again, type in what you want changed in the box at the top of the page and…
Lots of options, but the third option, Bold Fraktur, is the one I like best. Again, copy and paste it directly into the status update window:
No surprise, spell-check has flagged the upside-down passage because what it’s seeing is “nwod-edispu evah ot ekil dluow”, all of which are most definitely incorrectly spelled! I’ve also added a couple of ASCII symbol shortcuts too: (y) turns into a thumbs-up icon, and 🙂 is converted into a smiley-face emoji.
READY TO POST YOUR MASTERPIECE!
Now it’s just a matter of clicking or tapping on Post and your new Facebook status update can stand with the best of ’em in terms of being visually interesting:
That’s it. Just bookmark TextFancy.com and you’ll be able to do this any time you’d like.
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