What does J mean?
What is a J? A letter in the alphabet, yes, no, yes? Well sometimes it’s a bit more than that, or rather, something different.
Have you ever got emails like this and wondered what the HELL is that J?
I’ve been getting those for ages. And it became really annoying, so I thought let’s just figure it out. The truth, as often, is simpler than you’d expect.
These emails are sent from Outlook 2003 which says it’s using Word as it’s email editor. So let’s look at the source to see what’s going on there. Following is the e-mail body source with omissions.
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
------=_NextPart_000_0001_01C6281A.6232E080
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
This email is trying to be funny <img src="http://download.skype.com/share/emoticons/0100-smile.png" alt=":-)" />
Rgds,
Jaanus.
------=_NextPart_000_0001_01C6281A.6232E080
Content-Type: text/html;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
<html xmlns:o=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" =
xmlns:w=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" =
xmlns=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
<head>
<META HTTP-EQUIV=3D"Content-Type" CONTENT=3D"text/html; =
charset=3Dus-ascii">
<meta name=3DGenerator content=3D"Microsoft Word 11 (filtered medium)">
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Wingdings;
panose-1:5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;}
(whole pile of junk skipped)
<p class=3DMsoNormal><font size=3D2 face=3DArial><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>This email is trying to be funny </span></font><font =
size=3D2
face=3DWingdings><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Wingdings'>J</span></font><font
size=3D2 face=3DArial><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p=
>
So this is strange. Outlook is kind enough and provides multipart encoding, where the semantics of the J, which, if we run ahead, means the smiley face in Wingdings font, is correct. Yet Thunderbird (I’m not sure how other mailers behave) sees that there’s HTML content and tries to render it. But it’s apparently so weirdly encoded (what’s with the double encoding of = into =3D??? Why why why? — thanks Erki, of course it’s because I missed it’s quoted/printable. Duh. Well, it’s still bad HTML…) that it skips part of it and apparently can’t recognize the font span tag which would tell it to render the J/smiley character in Wingdings, so it just ignores it and so it’s J’s all over galore.
So, next time when I get such e-mail from Outlook, can I just reply “yeah, J right back at you J J J” and hope they’ll also figure it out like I did? 
UPDATE: also see here — an interesting MS blog about tech topics.
THANK YOU! I have been trying to figure that out for years, literally. I finally decided to google it. I thought they were typing “J” and I was like WTF? Thanks!
like the above commenter, i found your post via the almighty google. i thought i was missing some sort of with-it slang and was being outed by some pretty un-hip people. what a relief that it’s just another hiccup like those pesky .dat files… many thanks. i can rest easy that the issue is not that i’m merely getting old. phew!
Was so perplexed by all my emails until this. Thanks so much! J
wow! that’s it, bad HTML!! Thanks Jaanus, I can now return to sanity.
You can fix this in Thunderbird on windows.
Start off with firefox which in its installed directory in which there is a res folder and in that a fonts folder (so something like C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\res\fonts) in there is a file called fontEncoding.properties. Open that file and find the line ‘# Symbol font’ after that line add the following:
encoding.wingdings.ttf = windows-1252 encoding.wingdings2.ttf = windows-1252 encoding.wingdings3.ttf = windows-1252 encoding.webdings.ttf = windows-1252
These are for all the wingdings fonts and webdings, this will fix the J in firefox, now copy this file (i copied the entire directory) into your thunderbird install directory in the same position (so C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\res\fonts) it wont exist to start with or at least it the fonts folder wasn’t there for me.
After that restart thunderbird and it should work (test by getting someone you know who uses outlook to send you a ‘J’ in windings font
Ditto. Finally Googled the J thing. Thank God. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
I always assumed it was a more business correct way of letting someone know you were joking… a shortened “j/k” (which is already an abbreviation.
So I wasn’t too far off, but that is annoying. In professional emails, lose the fucking smiley faces. And in IM, don’t abbreviate. YT? seriously, how take the extra 1.5 seconds and type it out. It does wonders for your image.
:/ J
thanks for sorting my head out on this one, I spent ages trying to think what on earth could be meant by someone typing a J at the end of an email ! and it turns out just to be a bloody smiley face and nothing deeply profound. JJJ