Email “icon-ography” for health professionals

Biji T Kurien

Senior Research Scientist, Arthritis and Immunology, Oklahoma Medical Research Foun- dation, 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 sym- bols 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 other- wise.

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

Legend:

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

1. Kurien BT. The 2 GHz mind of a computer. Med J Aust 2004; 180: 19.