How do I ........

Bring widgets/webdings/wingdings/symbols into Secondlife?
I know its possible because I have seen them on people's profiles but for the life of me I can NOT figure out how to do it. I have tried copy and pasting from my Word Processor program, copy and pasting from the web and I even learnt how to figure charactor maps (who would have thought fonts were hiden!) But everything I paste onto a notecard in game turns into just an alphabet letter.
Please if you know the secret - share?
*hugs* in advance .... I am going to sleep on this before I throw my laptop on the floor in frustration.

It is done using alt characters. Holding down the alt key while entering the correct number

alt-1 = ☺
alt-2 = ☻

This link gives a listing of many of these characters, but they may not all work.
http://www.tedmontgomery.com/tutorial/ALTchrc.html