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Format Gmail Gtalk Status

May 11th, 2006 by bill · 32 Comments

»How to format gmail chat status lines and add some special characters.

 

Not that big a deal, but you can format your Gmail Talk Statuses in Gmail and include some special characters.

Bold and Italics
Get bold or italics using Textile-like commands. Surround text with underscores “_” for italics, or asteriks “*” for bold.

For example, enter _Really_ Busy to display Really Busy.

Update: you can now strike through text by surround text with hypens, as in strike through is -not- supported in Gmail chat to display strike through is not supported in Gmail chat.

However, adjacent punctuation seems to throw it off. If it doesn’t work, try surrounding the formatted text with spaces.

Special Characters
Also, copy/paste ASCII characters into the status, such as ♫♪ if you’re, well, listening to music.

Tags: Tips

 

32 responses so far ↓

  • 1 boo // Nov 29, 1999 at 7:00 pm

    crab!!! V.v.V

  • 2 rachel // Nov 29, 1999 at 7:00 pm

    if you do :{ you get a smiley with a moustache!!!! lol <3 :P

  • 3 OlivierJ // Nov 23, 2006 at 1:15 pm

    Please note that the character you mention in “Special Characters” is not ASCII, it is Unicode (in UTF-8 it is coded on 3 bytes : 0xE2, 0×99, 0xAB).

  • 4 Pavel Mickevic // Mar 30, 2007 at 8:26 am

    oh well… And what about color? Has anybody figured out something about that?

  • 5 Pavel Mickevic // Mar 30, 2007 at 8:27 am

    I like your capcha image ;) Realy, specialy when there are special chars :) How am I supposed to write them :D

  • 6 Gmail Chat Fun » techrageo.us // Apr 12, 2007 at 8:41 pm

    [...] Currently Gmail Chat does not support formatting like Yahoo or others do. But there are some things you can do to spice up the experience, such as it is. Some of this applies to Gtalk, some doesn’t. Previously, we’ve covered bold, italics, and special characters (like ♫). We also noted that Google added an incoming-chat sound and the ability to add a picture to a Gmail contact. [...]

  • 7 pope // Apr 15, 2007 at 4:10 am

    The best part about gchat is that there are no annoying smileys and it’s just pure chat!

  • 8 Little Owner // Feb 29, 2008 at 9:39 pm

    Type in =) or =( and the faces will turn right-side up. Try it out! Or you could use :) , :( it will work also.

  • 9 Little Owner // Feb 29, 2008 at 9:40 pm

    :)

  • 10 Little Owner // Feb 29, 2008 at 9:40 pm

    That is :) , without the comma

  • 11 ryan smith // Mar 1, 2008 at 6:19 pm

    i cant get the bold to work!

  • 12 bill // Mar 2, 2008 at 1:53 pm

    @Little Owner – Thanks. You might want to check out the following articles: New Gmail Chat Smilies and Gmail Chat Fun.

  • 13 bill // Mar 2, 2008 at 1:54 pm

    @ryan smith – just surround the text you wish to bold with asterisks. For instance, *bold text* will be rendered as bold text.

  • 14 allie98 // Apr 29, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    is there a way to turn this off? i don’t like not using * to show action when i’m chatting >_<*

  • 15 bill // May 2, 2008 at 12:22 pm

    @allie98 – I don’t think so. Improvise, overcome, adapt.

  • 16 Elias // May 26, 2008 at 7:31 pm

    @allie98, format your text like **this** it will make it bold but also use them for showing action.

  • 17 bree // Dec 21, 2008 at 1:09 pm

    if your chatting and you type * <—- that dot thing if you type 3 of them it turns into 1
    if you type 5 it turns into 3

  • 18 Sharad // Jun 5, 2009 at 6:49 pm

    Also, if you put hyphens around a sentence there will be a line through it. -Like so-

  • 19 bill // Jun 6, 2009 at 10:06 am

    @Sharad, now that is a useful comment. Thanks. This looks like a recent addition to Gmail chat.

  • 20 este de aca // Jun 9, 2009 at 8:02 pm

    Provino, provino.

  • 21 monkeygirl // Aug 2, 2009 at 3:05 pm

    there should be a candy >o<

    : (|)

    there’s not every one of the ones from the email list, the angel isnt there but is on the email one

    ya a fire breathing dragon!!!!!! }:o~~

    and the angel should be O:)

    there is a peace one but i cant figure it out!!!!!!!

    @sharad
    FWI
    the -dashes- this is at the top of the page

  • 22 smiley face // Dec 9, 2009 at 5:38 pm

    these are all sooooooooooooooooo helpful!!!

  • 23 Meeps // Dec 13, 2009 at 6:31 pm

    WHAT IS THE PEACE ONE???? I really want to find it out!

  • 24 Cheant'e // Dec 24, 2009 at 1:29 am

    How do you do the strike through words?
    It’s not working.

  • 25 reya // Feb 19, 2010 at 7:28 pm

    i cant get the italicize 2 work how do u do it again?

  • 26 prashant // Apr 20, 2010 at 3:01 pm

    peace is \m/

  • 27 bill // May 3, 2010 at 3:36 pm

    @prashant, \m/ is “rock-out” or a radio.

  • 28 Liz // Jul 1, 2010 at 12:06 pm

    I don’t get how to do the special icon things. Can someone tell me how to do that?

    Option-shift-K =  if you have a Mac. :P Try it out!

  • 29 ME // Jan 19, 2011 at 4:43 pm

    THIS DOES NOPT WORK

  • 30 Madison // Feb 20, 2011 at 2:00 pm

    How do you do ALL the special characters? Like the music notes, hearts and all those things? I’m really frustrated, and i really wanna learn how to do them!!!!

  • 31 Madison // Mar 12, 2011 at 2:09 pm

    LIKE REALLY SOON!!!!! I have a hp pavilion ze4500 laptop, can i do them on this laptop or not?? hopefully i can?!?!!

  • 32 Sara // Oct 2, 2011 at 10:59 am

    I cannot get he cool character charts ANYWHERE!!!!

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