How to Make a Stick Man From Typing on a Keyboard

A picture that is created by using numbers and letters on a computer keyboard is considered a form of ASCII art. ASCII stands for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and the art form includes emoticons, which are simple combinations of keyboard characters on one line to create sideways drawings of such things as happy faces, sad faces and stemmed roses. You can also use ASCII art to draw a sideways stick man on a single text line.

Type a capital letter "O" at the beginning of the line.

Find the dash key on your computer keyboard, usually located on the upper right-hand side near your zero key. Type your dash key once so that you have O- on your line.

Locate the "pipe" character, which looks like a straight up and down vertical line, on your keyboard. This key is usually found in the upper right-hand corner of your keyboard directly under the "Delete" key. Once you have found the pipe character key, you may need to hold "Shift" while you press it to get the straight line and not the backslash. Your stick man should now look like this: O-|

Create the stick man's body with two more dashes, like so: O-|--

To finish your stick man ASCII drawing, create his legs by locating the "left angle bracket" character on your keyboard. This character typically shares the same key as the comma, so you may need to hold down "Shift" again to create the left angle bracket. Your stick man is now finished and should look like this: O-|--<