Wingdings are useful in text only environments to represent different things. Of course, they also get abused by 13 year old girls that want to be kewl.

When I was a 13 year old girl and kewl I used to use Wingings all the time. Since I became a 27 year old man I no longer use them.

The Wingdings fonts were designed by Kris Holmes and Charles Bigelow in 1990 and 1991. The fonts were originally named Lucida Icons, Arrows, and Stars to complement the Lucida text font family by the same designers. Renamed, reorganized, and released in 1992 as Microsoft Wingdings(TM), the three fonts provide a harmoniously designed set of icons representing the common components of personal computer systems and the elements of graphical user interfaces. There are icons for PC, monitor, keyboard, mouse, trackball, hard drive, diskette, tape cassette, printer, fax, etc., as well as icons for file folders, documents, mail, mailboxes, windows, clipboard, and wastebasket. In addition, Wingdings includes icons with both traditional and computer significance, such as writing tools and hands, reading glasses, clipping scissors, bell, bomb, check boxes, as well as more traditional images such as weather signs, religious symbols, astrological signs, encircled numerals, a selection of ampersands and interrobangs, plus elegant flowers and flourishes. Pointing and indicating are frequent functions in graphical interfaces, so in adition to a wide selection of pointing hands, the Wingdings fonts also offer arrows in careful gradations of weight and different directions and styles. For variety and impact as bullets, asterisks, and ornaments, Windings also offers a varied set of geometric circles, squares, polygons, targets, and stars.

...those aren't wingdings, they're Egyptian hieroglyphics...

http://www.kingtut-treasures.com/abc.jpg