Why does Mail.app translate the :-) smiley into a computer icon

emailiconmail.app

I noticed that if someone writes me a message and includes :-) in it, Mail.app translates it a computer, mailbox and telephone icon:

enter image description here

If I copy paste these three icons to another program (TextEdit for example) it pastes as :-).
Other smileys, like ;-), are not converted by Mail and show up as intended.
My MacBook Pro is running OSX 10.8.4, Mail 6.5 and the default (and only) language in System Preferences -> Language & Text is British English.

How can I force Mail to show :-) instead of the three icons?

Update:
Just checked the same message on the Gmail website, and it also showed the three symbols instead of the :-) smiley. So it seems to be caused by the sender. Double checking I sent an e-mail to myself with the :-) from the Gmail website and all was fine. The smiley showed as a smiley.

E-mail header:
This is the e-mail header with stripped addresses and dates. The ;-) smiley of the content shows alright, but the :-) gets transformed into the icon.

Delivered-To: receiver
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
        d=gmail.com; s=20120113;
        h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type;
        bh=3H2PCCC335OLe+Lvqj/dMcRCFvHrPBVZaMi1o/kzjsU=;
        b=Sxr7L8398byVePjxFrQCZghNWCYpBLd7dCV62QJ+xTTfBSf+EsrbmNs4SSZnEVFvhh
         lQXADjThKhTGjxRyxt119KX0PqVlxEjiRR6Cx95tPbTtN4K1b8UKMc2nnw6t1d9hPyoK
         S9VnKU3X+NI0JsOrkzutz7CsmPE5Z/BlZvNK7ZkbMZlKggn1li5j72v1QiGCDyG4kcLk
         M2Ijj1g0TRISRmIeyaAKDxq1vLYFVvFOHt2Lkl0Nc7gAryqhBSmLoNgzgjnTfWjEUf4g
         cGYYVRbkmn1CG78RIDprIbMOXXWBuqIC/KPs9fuH7FLOr97r/CYoRWIumZis2uu1Sfm5
         +7Ow==
MIME-Version: 1.0
Message-ID: <CAB6M5AkUFH3Vy=3FBiWqG5YJMk0V_HhQOdrvCqjmxVbt5dnBog@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: subject
From: sender
To: receiver
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=047d7b5d574ed1d37b04e1d6a95e

--047d7b5d574ed1d37b04e1d6a95e
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

... als ik ;-).
... even druk :-)

--047d7b5d574ed1d37b04e1d6a95e
Content-Type: text/html; charset=windows-1252
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<div dir=3D"ltr"><div>

<p class=3D""><span style lang=3D"NL">... als ik ;-). 

<p class=3D""><span style lang=3D"NL">...even druk </spa=
n><span style=3D"font-family:Wingdings" lang=3D"NL"><span style>:-)</span><=
/span><span style lang=3D"NL">. </span></p>


--047d7b5d574ed1d37b04e1d6a95e--

Best Answer

For whatever reason, the people sending you emails are sending the smileys in Wingdings. With the normal Microsoft encoding of Wingdings, the letters and punctuation map to the symbols.

Presumably, you have MS Office for Mac installed, because that installs a version of the font which includes these symbols in the normal character slots. That's why you get the funny symbols.

By default, Mac OS X ships with a version of the font that does NOT have those symbols assigned to letters and punctuation. In that case, apps will display normal letters.

The best solution would be to stop the sender from setting weird wingdings font on :-), but that may not be possible.

Another option is to remove the Microsoft version of the font and leave the OS X version. But that would mean that if you try to use Wingdings characters by typing letters, it wouldn't work. You'd need to add them from the character panel.

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