Google Docs includes a robust automatic substitution feature designed to speed up your typing. One of its most noticeable actions is instantly replacing text-based emoticons—like typing a colon followed by a closing parenthesis :)—into full, graphical emojis (🙂). While this is fun for casual writing, it can be highly unprofessional in formal business reports, academic papers, or when drafting code snippets where specific character strings must remain exactly as typed. If you prefer your emoticons to stay as plain text, you can easily disable this automatic replacement.
How to Turn Off Emoji Replacements
You can manage all of Google Docs’ automatic typing corrections from the Preferences menu.
- Open your document in Google Docs.
- Click on the Tools menu in the top toolbar.
- Select Preferences from the drop-down menu.
- A new dialogue box will appear. Click on the Substitutions tab at the top.
- You will see a long list of automatic replacements (e.g., (c) replacing with ©).
- Scroll down the list until you find the specific emoticon combinations you want to stop (like 🙂, 🙁, or :/).
- Click the blue checkbox next to the emoticon to uncheck it. (Alternatively, you can click the small “x” on the right side of the row to delete the rule entirely).
- Repeat this for any other symbols you want to keep as plain text.
- Click OK at the bottom of the window to save your changes.
From now on, typing 🙂 will simply leave the colon and parenthesis on the page without transforming into a yellow graphic.