![Texting Emoji](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Texting_Emoji.jpg)
An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a
pictogram
A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and ...
,
logogram
In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced ''hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, as ...
,
ideogram
An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek "idea" and "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarit ...
or
smiley
A smiley, sometimes referred to as a smiley face, is a basic ideogram that represents a smiling face. Since the 1950s it has become part of popular culture worldwide, used either as a standalone ideogram, or as a form of communication, such a ...
embedded in text and used in electronic messages and
web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversation. Examples of emoji are 😂, 😃, 🧘🏻♂️, 🌍, 🌦️, 🍞, 🚗, 📞, 🎉, ❤️, 🍆, 🍑 and 🏁. Emoji exist in various genres, including facial expressions, common objects, places and types of weather, and animals. They are much like
emoticon
An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a ...
s, except emoji are pictures rather than
typographic approximations; the term "emoji" in the strict sense refers to such pictures which can be represented as
encoded characters, but it is sometimes applied to
messaging stickers by extension. Originally meaning
pictograph
A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and gr ...
, the word ''emoji'' comes from Japanese + ; the resemblance to the English words ''emotion'' and ''
emoticon
An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a ...
'' is
purely coincidental. The
ISO 15924
ISO 15924, ''Codes for the representation of names of scripts'', is an international standard defining codes for writing systems or ''scripts'' (a "set of graphic characters used for the written form of one or more languages"). Each script is given ...
script code for emoji is
Zsye
.
Originating on
Japanese mobile phones in 1997, emoji became increasingly popular worldwide in the 2010s after being added to several mobile operating systems.
They are now considered to be a large part of
popular culture
Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...
in
the West
West is a cardinal direction or compass point.
West or The West may also refer to:
Geography and locations
Global context
* The Western world
* Western culture and Western civilization in general
* The Western Bloc, countries allied with NATO ...
and around the world. In 2015,
Oxford Dictionaries Oxford dictionary may refer to any dictionary published by Oxford University Press, particularly:
Historical dictionaries
* ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'')
* ''Shorter Oxford English Dictionary'', abridgement of the ''OED''
Single-volume d ...
named the
Face with Tears of Joy emoji
file:Emojione 1F602.svg, Appearance in JoyPixels version 2.2, 167x167px
Face with Tears of Joy (😂) is an emoji that represents a crying with laughter facial expression. While it is broadly referred to as an emoji, since it is used to demonstrat ...
(😂) the
word of the year
The word(s) of the year, sometimes capitalized as "Word(s) of the Year" and abbreviated "WOTY" (or "WotY"), refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word(s) or expression(s) in the public sphere during a specific year.
The Ge ...
.
History
Evolution from emoticons (1990s)
The emoji was predated by the
emoticon
An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a ...
, a concept implemented in 1982 by computer scientist
Scott Fahlman
Scott Elliott Fahlman (born March 21, 1948) is a computer scientist and Professor Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute and Computer Science Department. He is notable for early work on automated planning and sc ...
when he suggested text-based symbols such as :-) and :-( could be used to replace language. Theories about language replacement can be traced back to the 1960s, when Russian novelist and professor
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
stated in an interview with ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'': "I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile — some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket."
It did not become a mainstream concept until the 1990s when Japanese, American and European companies began developing Fahlman's idea.
Mary Kalantzis
Professor Mary Kalantzis (born 1949) is an Australian author and academic, and is a former dean of the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in the United States. Her work examines Australian multiculturalism. ...
and
Bill Cope point out that similar symbology was incorporated by Bruce Parello, a student at the
University of Illinois
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...
, into
PLATO IV
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
, the first
e-learning
Educational technology (commonly abbreviated as edutech, or edtech) is the combined use of computer hardware, software, and Education sciences, educational theory and practice to facilitate learning. When referred to with its abbreviation, edt ...
system, in 1972.
The PLATO system was not considered mainstream, and therefore Parello's
pictogram
A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and ...
s were only used by a small number of people.
Scott Fahlman
Scott Elliott Fahlman (born March 21, 1948) is a computer scientist and Professor Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute and Computer Science Department. He is notable for early work on automated planning and sc ...
's emoticons importantly used common alphabet symbols, and aimed to replace language/text to express emotion, and for that reason are seen as the actual origin of
emoticon
An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a ...
s.
Wingdings
Wingdings is a series of dingbat fonts that render letters as a variety of symbols. They were originally developed in 1990 by Microsoft by combining glyphs from Lucida Icons, Arrows, and Stars licensed from Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. Cert ...
, a font invented by
Charles Bigelow and
Kris Holmes
Kris Holmes (born 1950, Reedley, California) is an American typeface designer, calligrapher, type design educator and animator. She, with Charles Bigelow, is the co-creator of the Lucida font family, among many other typeface designs. She is Pres ...
, was released by
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
in 1990. It could be used to send pictographs in
rich text
Rich may refer to:
Common uses
* Rich, an entity possessing wealth
* Rich, an intense flavor, color, sound, texture, or feeling
** Rich (wine), a descriptor in wine tasting
Places United States
* Rich, Mississippi, an unincorporated commun ...
messages, but would only load on devices with the Wingdings font installed.
In 1995, the French newspaper ''
Le Monde
''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...
'' announced that
Alcatel Alcatel may refer to:
* Alcatel, a former French telecommunications equipment company, which became Alcatel-Lucent and is now part of Nokia
* Alcatel Mobile, a brand of mobile phones, tablets and wearables, formerly a joint venture between Alcatel ...
would be launching a new phone, the BC 600. Its welcome screen displayed a digital smiley face, replacing the usual text seen as part of the "welcome message" often seen on other devices at the time. In 1997,
J-Phone
is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs th ...
launched the SkyWalker DP-211SW, which contained a set of 90 emoji. It is thought to be the first set of its kind. Its designs, each measuring 12 by 12 pixels were
monochrome
A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochrom ...
, depicting numbers, sports, the time,
moon phases
Concerning the lunar month of ~29.53 days as viewed from Earth, the lunar phase or Moon phase is the shape of the Moon's directly sunlit portion, which can be expressed quantitatively using areas or angles, or described qualitatively using the t ...
and the weather. It contained the
Pile of Poo emoji in particular.
The J-Phone model experienced low sales, and the emoji set was thus rarely used.
In 1999,
Shigetaka Kurita
(born May 9, 1972, Gifu Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese interface designer and often cited for his early work with emoji sets. Many refer to him as the creator of the emoji, a claim clarified in recent years. He was part of the team that cr ...
created 176 emoji as part of
NTT DoCoMo's
i-mode
NTT DoCoMo's i-mode is a mobile internet (distinct from wireless internet) service popular in Japan. Unlike Wireless Application Protocols, i-mode encompasses a wider variety of internet standards, including web access, e-mail, and the packet- ...
, used on its mobile platform.
They were intended to help facilitate electronic communication, and to serve as a distinguishing feature from other services.
Due to their influence, Kurita's designs were once claimed to be the first cellular emoji;
however, Kurita has denied that this is the case. According to interviews, he took inspiration from Japanese
manga
Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...
where characters are often drawn with symbolic representations called ''manpu'' (such as a water drop on a face representing nervousness or confusion), and weather pictograms used to depict the weather conditions at any given time. He also drew inspiration from
Chinese characters
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...
and street sign pictograms.
The DoCoMo i-Mode set included facial expressions, such as smiley faces, derived from a Japanese visual style commonly found in manga and
anime
is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...
, combined with ''
kaomoji
An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a person's feelings, m ...
'' and smiley elements. Kurita's work is displayed in the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
.
Kurita's emoji were brightly colored, albeit with a single color per
glyph
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
. General-use emoji, such as sports, actions and weather, can readily be traced back to Kurita's emoji set.
Notably absent from the set were pictograms that demonstrated emotion. The yellow-faced emoji in current use evolved from other emoticon sets and cannot be traced back to Kurita's work.
His set also had generic images much like the
J-Phone
is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs th ...
s. Elsewhere in the 1990s,
Nokia
Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...
phones began including preset pictograms in its text messaging app, which they defined as "smileys and symbols".
A third notable emoji set was introduced by Japanese mobile phone brand
au by KDDI
au, or au by KDDI, is a Japanese mobile phone operator. au is a brand marketed by KDDI in the main islands of Japan and by Okinawa Cellular in Okinawa for their mobile cellular services. au is the second-largest wireless carrier in Japan, wit ...
.
Development of emoji sets (2000–2007)
The basic 12-by-12-pixel emoji in Japan grew in popularity across various platforms over the next decade. This was aided by the popularity of DoCoMo i-mode, which for many was the origins of the
smartphone
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...
. The i-mode service also saw the introduction of emoji in conversation form on messenger
apps. By 2004, i-mode had 40 million subscribers, exposing numerous people to emoji for the first time between 2000 and 2004. The popularity of i-mode led to other manufacturers offering their own emoji sets. While emoji adoption was high in Japan during this time, the competitors failed to collaborate to create a uniform set of emoji to be used across all platforms in the country.
![Codepage-437 (cropped)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Codepage-437_%28cropped%29.png)
The
Universal Coded Character Set
The Universal Coded Character Set (UCS, Unicode) is a standard set of characters defined by the international standard ISO/IEC 10646, ''Information technology — Universal Coded Character Set (UCS)'' (plus amendments to that standard), whi ...
(
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
), controlled by the
Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intenti ...
and
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 Coded character sets is a standardization subcommittee of the Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), that devel ...
, had already been established as the international standard for text representation (
ISO/IEC 10646
ISO/IEC JTC 1, entitled "Information technology", is a joint technical committee (JTC) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Its purpose is to develop, maintain and pr ...
) since 1993, although variants of
Shift JIS
Shift JIS (Shift Japanese Industrial Standards, also SJIS, MIME name Shift_JIS, known as PCK in Solaris contexts) is a character encoding for the Japanese language, originally developed by a Japanese company called ASCII Corporation in conjunctio ...
remained relatively common in Japan. Unicode included several characters which would subsequently be classified as emoji, including some from North American or Western European sources such as
DOS code page 437,
ITC Zapf Dingbats
ITC Zapf Dingbats is one of the more common dingbat typefaces. It was designed by the typographer Hermann Zapf in 1978 and licensed by International Typeface Corporation.
History
In 1977, Zapf created about 1000 (or over 1200 according to Lino ...
or the
WordPerfect Iconic Symbols set. Unicode coverage of written characters was extended several times by new editions during the 2000s, with little interest in incorporating the Japanese cellular emoji sets (deemed out of scope),
although symbol characters which would subsequently be classified as emoji continued to be added. For example, Unicode 4.0 contained 16 new emoji, which included direction arrows, a warning triangle, and an eject button. Besides Zapf Dingbats, other
dingbat
In typography, a dingbat (sometimes more formally known as a printer's ornament or printer's character) is an ornament, specifically, a glyph used in typesetting, often employed to create box frames, (similar to box-drawing characters) or a ...
fonts such as Wingdings or Webdings also included additional pictographic symbols in their own custom pi font encodings; unlike Zapf Dingbats, however, many of these would not be available as Unicode emoji until 2014.
The Smiley Company
The Smiley Company is a brand licensing company, based in London, United Kingdom. It holds the rights to the smiley face in over 100 countries. The company creates products including textiles, puzzles, party goods, stationery, automobile accessorie ...
developed The Smiley Dictionary, which was launched in 2001. The desktop platform was aimed at allowing people to insert smileys as text when sending emails and writing on a
desktop computer
A desktop computer (often abbreviated desktop) is a personal computer designed for regular use at a single location on or near a desk due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuration has a case that houses the power supply ...
.
The smiley toolbar offered a variety of symbols and smileys and was used on platforms such as
MSN Messenger
MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as "Messenger"), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a cross-platform instant messaging client, instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the Microsoft Messenger ser ...
.
Nokia
Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...
, then one of the largest global telecom companies, was still referring to today's emoji sets as
smiley
A smiley, sometimes referred to as a smiley face, is a basic ideogram that represents a smiling face. Since the 1950s it has become part of popular culture worldwide, used either as a standalone ideogram, or as a form of communication, such a ...
s in 2001. The digital smiley movement was headed up by Nicolas Loufrani, the CEO of The Smiley Company.
He created a smiley toolbar, which was available at smileydictionary.com during the early 2000s to be sent as emoji are today.
Beginnings of Unicode emoji (2008–2014)
Mobile providers in both the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
began discussions on how to introduce their own emoji sets from 2004 onwards. Many companies did not begin to take emoji seriously until
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
employees requested that
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
look into the possibility of a uniform emoji set.
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
quickly followed and began to collaborate with not only
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
, but also providers in
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
and
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
. In August 2007,
Mark Davis Mark Davis may refer to:
Entertainers
*Mark Davis (talk show host), American radio talk show host
* Mark Jonathan Davis (born 1965), American actor/singer and creator of Richard Cheese
*Mark Davis, American bassist and founding member for the band ...
and his colleagues Kat Momoi and Markus Scherer wrote the first draft for consideration by the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC), to introduce emoji into the
Unicode standard
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, whic ...
. The UTC, having previously deemed emoji to be out of scope for Unicode, made the decision to broaden its scope to enable compatibility with the Japanese cellular carrier formats which were becoming more widespread.
Peter Edberg and Yasuo Kida joined the collaborative effort from
Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...
shortly after, and their official UTC proposal came in January 2009.
Pending the assignment of standard Unicode
code point
In character encoding terminology, a code point, codepoint or code position is a numerical value that maps to a specific character. Code points usually represent a single grapheme—usually a letter, digit, punctuation mark, or whitespace—but ...
s, Google and Apple implemented emoji support via
Private Use Area
In Unicode, a Private Use Area (PUA) is a range of code points that, by definition, will not be assigned characters by the Unicode Consortium. Three private use areas are defined: one in the Basic Multilingual Plane (), and one each in, and nearl ...
schemes. Google first introduced emoji in Gmail in October 2008, in collaboration with
au by KDDI
au, or au by KDDI, is a Japanese mobile phone operator. au is a brand marketed by KDDI in the main islands of Japan and by Okinawa Cellular in Okinawa for their mobile cellular services. au is the second-largest wireless carrier in Japan, wit ...
,
and Apple introduced the first release of
Apple Color Emoji
Apple Color Emoji (stylized as AppleColorEmoji) is a color typeface used on Apple platforms such as iOS and macOS to display Emoji characters.
The inclusion of emoji in the iPhone and in the Unicode standard has been credited with promoting th ...
to
iPhone OS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
on 21 November 2008. Initially, Apple's emoji support was implemented for holders of a SoftBank SIM card; the emoji themselves were represented using SoftBank's Private Use Area scheme and mostly resembled the SoftBank designs. Gmail emoji used their own Private Use Area scheme, in a
supplementary Private Use plane.
Separately, a proposal had been submitted in 2008 to add the
ARIB extended characters used in broadcasting in Japan to Unicode. This included several pictographic symbols. These were added in Unicode 5.2 in 2009, a year before the cellular emoji sets were fully added; they include several characters which either also appeared amongst the cellular emoji
or were subsequently classified as emoji.
After iPhone users in the United States discovered that downloading Japanese
apps allowed access to the keyboard, pressure grew to expand the availability of the emoji keyboard beyond Japan.
The Emoji application for iOS, which altered the Settings app to allow access to the emoji keyboard, was created by
Josh Gare
Josh Gare (born 20 September 1992) is an English computer programmer and internet entrepreneur. He is best known for facilitating the Emoji keyboard outside of Japan on iOS, which is a keyboard that can be used to send messages with emoticons. H ...
in February 2010. Before the existence of Gare's Emoji app,
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
had intended for the emoji keyboard to only be available in
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
in
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
version 2.2.
Throughout 2009, members of the
Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intenti ...
and national standardization bodies of various countries gave feedback and proposed changes to the international standardization of the emoji. The feedback from various bodies in the United States, Europe, and Japan agreed on a set of 722 emoji as the standard set. This would be released in October 2010 in Unicode 6.0. Apple made the emoji keyboard available to those outside of Japan in iOS version 5.0 in 2011. Later, Unicode 7.0 (June 2014) added the
character repertoire
Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using digital computers. The numerical values that ...
s of the
Webdings
Webdings is a TrueType dingbat typeface developed in 1997. It was initially distributed with Internet Explorer 4.0, then as part of Core fonts for the Web, and is included in all versions of Microsoft Windows since Windows 98. All of the pictogr ...
and
Wingdings
Wingdings is a series of dingbat fonts that render letters as a variety of symbols. They were originally developed in 1990 by Microsoft by combining glyphs from Lucida Icons, Arrows, and Stars licensed from Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. Cert ...
fonts to Unicode, resulting in approximately 250 more Unicode emoji.
The Unicode emoji whose
code point
In character encoding terminology, a code point, codepoint or code position is a numerical value that maps to a specific character. Code points usually represent a single grapheme—usually a letter, digit, punctuation mark, or whitespace—but ...
s were assigned in 2014 or earlier are therefore taken from several sources. A single character could exist in multiple sources, and characters from a source were unified with existing characters where appropriate: for example, the "shower" weather symbol (☔️) from the ARIB source was unified with an existing umbrella with raindrops character, which had been added for
KPS 9566
KPS 9566 ("''DPRK Standard Korean Graphic Character Set for Information Interchange''") is a North Korean standard specifying a character encoding for the Chosŏn'gŭl (Hangul) writing system used for the Korean language. The edition of 1997 speci ...
compatibility.
The emoji characters named from all three Japanese carriers were in turn unified with the ARIB character.
However, the Unicode Consortium groups the most significant sources of emoji into four categories:
UTS #51 and modern emoji (2015–present)
In late 2014, a Public Review Issue was created by the
Unicode Technical Committee
The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intentio ...
, seeking feedback on a proposed Unicode Technical Report (UTR) titled "
Unicode Emoji
An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversa ...
". This was intended to improve interoperability of emoji between vendors, and define a means of supporting multiple skin tones. The feedback period closed in January 2015. Also in January 2015, the use of the
zero width joiner
The zero-width joiner (ZWJ, ) is a non-printing character used in the computerized typesetting of writing systems in which the shape or positioning of a grapheme depends on its relation to other graphemes (complex scripts), such as the Arabic sc ...
to indicate that a sequence of emoji could be shown as a single equivalent glyph (analogous to a
ligature
Ligature may refer to:
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure
** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry
* Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
) as a means of implementing emoji without atomic code points, such as varied compositions of families, was discussed within the "emoji ad-hoc committee".
Unicode 8.0 (June 2015) added another 41 emoji, including articles of sports equipment such as the cricket bat, food items such as the
taco
A taco (, , ) is a traditional Mexican food consisting of a small hand-sized corn- or wheat-based tortilla topped with a filling. The tortilla is then folded around the filling and eaten by hand. A taco can be made with a variety of filling ...
, new facial expressions, and symbols for places of worship, as well as five characters (crab, scorpion, lion face, bow and arrow, amphora) to improve support for pictorial rather than symbolic representations of the signs of the
Zodiac
The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north or south (as measured in celestial latitude) of the ecliptic, the Sun path, apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. ...
.
Also in June 2015, the first approved version ("Emoji 1.0") of the Unicode Emoji report was published as Unicode Technical Report #51 (UTR #51). This introduced the mechanism of skin tone indicators, the first official recommendations about which Unicode characters were to be considered emoji, and the first official recommendations about which characters were to be displayed in an emoji font in absence of a
variation selector, and listed the zero width joiner sequences for families and couples that were implemented by existing vendors. Maintenance of UTR #51, taking emoji requests, and creating proposals for emoji characters and emoji mechanisms was made the responsibility of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee (ESC), operating as a subcommittee of the Unicode Technical Committee,
With the release of version 5.0 in May 2017 alongside Unicode 10.0, UTR #51 was redesignated a Unicode Technical Standard (UTS #51), making it an independent specification rather than merely an informative document. , there were 2,666 Unicode emoji listed. The next version of UTS #51 (published in May 2018) skipped to the version number Emoji 11.0, so as to synchronise its major version number with the corresponding version of the Unicode Standard.
The popularity of emoji has caused pressure from vendors and international markets to add additional designs into the Unicode standard to meet the demands of different cultures. Some characters now defined as emoji are inherited from a variety of pre-Unicode messenger systems not only used in Japan, including
Yahoo
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds ma ...
and
MSN Messenger
MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as "Messenger"), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a cross-platform instant messaging client, instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the Microsoft Messenger ser ...
.
Corporate demand for emoji standardization has placed pressures on the Unicode Consortium, with some members complaining that it had overtaken the group's traditional focus on standardizing characters used for minority languages and transcribing historical records.
Conversely, the Consortium recognises that public desire for emoji support has put pressure on vendors to improve their Unicode support,
which is especially true for characters outside the
Basic Multilingual Plane
In the Unicode standard, a plane is a continuous group of 65,536 (216) code points. There are 17 planes, identified by the numbers 0 to 16, which corresponds with the possible values 00–1016 of the first two positions in six position hexadecimal ...
,
thus leading to better support for Unicode's historic and minority scripts in deployed software.
Cultural influence
Oxford Dictionaries Oxford dictionary may refer to any dictionary published by Oxford University Press, particularly:
Historical dictionaries
* ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'')
* ''Shorter Oxford English Dictionary'', abridgement of the ''OED''
Single-volume d ...
named its 2015
Word of the Year
The word(s) of the year, sometimes capitalized as "Word(s) of the Year" and abbreviated "WOTY" (or "WotY"), refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word(s) or expression(s) in the public sphere during a specific year.
The Ge ...
.
Oxford noted that 2015 had seen a sizable increase in the use of the word "emoji" and recognized its impact on popular culture.
Oxford Dictionaries President Caspar Grathwohl expressed that "traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st Century communication. It's not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps—it's flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully."
SwiftKey
Microsoft SwiftKey is a virtual keyboard app originally developed by TouchType for Android and iOS devices. It was first released for Android in July 2010, followed by an iOS release in September 2014 after Apple implemented third-party keyb ...
found that "Face with Tears of Joy" was the most popular emoji across the world. The
American Dialect Society
The American Dialect Society (ADS), founded in 1889, is a learned society "dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it." The Society p ...
declared to be the "Most Notable Emoji" of 2015 in their Word of the Year vote.
Some emoji are specific to Japanese culture, such as a
bowing
Bowing (also called stooping) is the act of lowering the torso and head as a social gesture in direction to another person or symbol. It is most prominent in Asian cultures but it is also typical of nobility and aristocracy in many European coun ...
businessman (), the
shoshinsha mark
The or , officially , is a green and yellow V-shaped symbol that new drivers in Japan must display at the designated places at the front and the rear of their cars for one year after they obtain a standard driver's license. Drivers who consider ...
used to indicate a beginner driver (), a white flower () used to denote "brilliant homework", or a group of emoji representing popular foods:
ramen
is a Japanese dish, Japanese noodle dish. It consists of served in a broth; common flavors are soy sauce and miso, with typical toppings including , nori (dried seaweed), menma (bamboo shoots), and scallions. Ramen has its roots in Chinese ...
noodles (),
dango
is a Japanese dumpling made from rice flour mixed with uruchi rice flour and glutinous rice flour. It is different from the method of making mochi, which is made after steaming glutinous rice. ''Dango'' is usually finished round shaped, thre ...
(),
onigiri
, also known as , , or rice ball, is a Japanese food made from white rice formed into triangular or cylindrical shapes and often wrapped in ''nori''. Traditionally, an onigiri is filled with pickled ume (''umeboshi''), salted salmon, katsuobu ...
(),
curry
A curry is a dish with a sauce seasoned with spices, mainly associated with South Asian cuisine. In southern India, leaves from the curry tree may be included.
There are many varieties of curry. The choice of spices for each dish in tradit ...
(), and
sushi
is a Japanese cuisine, Japanese dish of prepared , usually with some sugar and salt, accompanied by a variety of , such as seafood, often raw, and vegetables. Styles of sushi and its presentation vary widely, but the one key ingredient is " ...
().
Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intenti ...
founder
Mark Davis Mark Davis may refer to:
Entertainers
*Mark Davis (talk show host), American radio talk show host
* Mark Jonathan Davis (born 1965), American actor/singer and creator of Richard Cheese
*Mark Davis, American bassist and founding member for the band ...
compared the use of emoji to a developing language, particularly mentioning the American use of
eggplant
Eggplant ( US, Canada), aubergine ( UK, Ireland) or brinjal (Indian subcontinent, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa) is a plant species in the nightshade family Solanaceae. ''Solanum melongena'' is grown worldwide for its edible fruit.
Mos ...
() to represent a
phallus
A phallus is a penis (especially when erect), an object that resembles a penis, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. In art history a figure with an erect penis is described as ithyphallic.
Any object that symbolically—or, more precisel ...
.
Some
linguists
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
have classified emoji and
emoticon
An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a ...
s as
discourse marker
A discourse marker is a word or a phrase that plays a role in managing the flow and structure of discourse. Since their main function is at the level of discourse (sequences of utterances) rather than at the level of utterances or sentences, disco ...
s.
In December 2015 a
sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis (also known as opinion mining or emotion AI) is the use of natural language processing, text analysis, computational linguistics, and biometrics to systematically identify, extract, quantify, and study affective states and subjec ...
of emoji was published, and the Emoji Sentiment Ranking 1.0 was provided. In 2016, a musical about emoji premiered in Los Angeles.
The computer-animated ''
The Emoji Movie
''The Emoji Movie'' is a 2017 American computer-animated science fiction comedy film produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. Directed by Tony Leondis, who wrote the script with Eri ...
'' was released in summer 2017.
In January 2017, in what is believed to be the first large-scale study of emoji usage, researchers at the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
analyzed over 1.2 billion messages input via the Kika Emoji Keyboard and announced that the Face With Tears of Joy was the most popular emoji. The Heart and the
Heart eyes emoji stood second and third, respectively. The study also found that the French use heart emoji the most. People in countries like Australia, France, and the Czech Republic used more happy emoji, while this was not so for people in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina, where people used more negative emoji in comparison to cultural hubs known for restraint and self-discipline, like Turkey, France and Russia.
There has been discussion among legal experts on whether or not emoji could be admissible as evidence in court trials. Furthermore, as emoji continue to develop and grow as a "language" of symbols, there may also be the potential of the formation of emoji "dialects". Emoji are being used as more than just to show reactions and emotions.
Snapchat
Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before the ...
has even incorporated emoji in its trophy and friends system with each emoji showing a complex meaning. Emojis can also convey different meanings based on syntax and inversion. For instance, 'fairy comments' involve heart, star, and fairy emojis placed between the words of a sentence. These comments often invert the meanings associated with hearts and may be used to 'tread on borders of offense.'
In 2017, the
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...
published
DeepMoji
15.ai is a non-commercial freeware artificial intelligence web application that generates natural emotive high-fidelity text-to-speech voices from an assortment of fictional characters from a variety of media sources. Developed by an anonymous ...
, a
deep neural network
Deep learning (also known as deep structured learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised.
De ...
sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis (also known as opinion mining or emotion AI) is the use of natural language processing, text analysis, computational linguistics, and biometrics to systematically identify, extract, quantify, and study affective states and subjec ...
algorithm that was trained on 1.2 billion emoji occurrences in
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
data from 2013 to 2017. DeepMoji was found to outperform human subjects in correctly identifying
sarcasm
Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection ...
in Tweets and other online modes of communication.
Use in furthering causes
On March 5, 2019, a drop of
blood
Blood is a body fluid in the circulatory system of humans and other vertebrates that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells, and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells. Blood in the c ...
() emoji was released, which is intended to help break the stigma of
menstruation
Menstruation (also known as a period, among other colloquial terms) is the regular discharge of blood and mucosal tissue from the inner lining of the uterus through the vagina. The menstrual cycle is characterized by the rise and fall of hor ...
.
In addition to normalizing
periods, it will also be relevant to describe medical topics such as
donating blood
A blood donation occurs when a person voluntarily has blood drawn and used for transfusions and/or made into biopharmaceutical medications by a process called fractionation (separation of whole blood components). Donation may be of whole blood ...
and other blood-related activities.
A
mosquito
Mosquitoes (or mosquitos) are members of a group of almost 3,600 species of small flies within the family Culicidae (from the Latin ''culex'' meaning " gnat"). The word "mosquito" (formed by ''mosca'' and diminutive ''-ito'') is Spanish for "li ...
() emoji was added in 2018 to raise awareness for
diseases spread by the insect, such as
dengue
Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne tropical disease caused by the dengue virus. Symptoms typically begin three to fourteen days after infection. These may include a high fever, headache, vomiting, muscle and joint pains, and a characteristic ...
and
malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. S ...
.
Linguistic function of emojis
Linguistically, emoji are used to indicate emotional state, they tend to be used more in positive communication. Some researchers believe emoji can be used for
visual rhetoric
Visual rhetoric is the art of effective communication through visual elements such as images, typography, and texts. Visual rhetoric encompasses the skill of visual literacy and the ability to analyze images for their form and meaning. Drawing on ...
. Emoji can be use to set emotional tone in messages. Emoji tend not to have their own meaning but act as a
paralanguage
Paralanguage, also known as vocalics, is a component of meta-communication that may modify meaning, give nuanced meaning, or convey emotion, by using techniques such as prosody, pitch, volume, intonation, etc. It is sometimes defined as relatin ...
adding meaning to text. Emoji can add clarity and credibility to text.
Sociolinguistically, the use of emoji differ depending on speaker and setting. Women use emoji more than men. Men use a wider variety of emoji. Women are more likely to use emoji in public communication than private communication.
Extraversion
The traits of extraversion (also spelled extroversion Retrieved 2018-02-21.) and introversion are a central dimension in some human personality theories. The terms ''introversion'' and ''extraversion'' were introduced into psychology by Carl J ...
and
agreeableness
Agreeableness is a personality trait manifesting itself in individual behavioral characteristics that are perceived as kind, sympathetic, cooperative, warm, and considerate. In contemporary personality psychology, agreeableness is one of the five ...
are positively correlated with emoji use,
neuroticism
In the study of psychology, neuroticism has been considered a fundamental personality trait. For example, in the Big Five approach to personality trait theory, individuals with high scores for neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody ...
is negative correlated. Emoji use differ between cultures: studies in terms of
Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory
Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory is a framework for cross-cultural communication, developed by Geert Hofstede. It shows the effects of a society's culture on the values of its members, and how these values relate to behavior, using a structu ...
found that cultures with high power distance and tolerance to indulgence used more negative emojis, while those with high uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and long-term orientation use more positive emojis.
Emoji communication problems
Research has shown that emoji are often misunderstood. In some cases, this misunderstanding is related to how the actual emoji design is interpreted by the viewer;
in other cases, the emoji that was sent is not shown in the same way on the receiving side.
The first issue relates to the cultural or contextual interpretation of the emoji. When the author picks an emoji, they think about it in a certain way, but the same character may not trigger the same thoughts in the mind of the receiver (see also
Models of communication
Models of communication are simplified representations of the process of communication. Most models try to describe both verbal and non-verbal communication and often understand it as an exchange of messages. Their function is to give a compact ...
).
For example, people in China have developed a system for using emoji subversively, so that a smiley face could be sent to convey a despising, mocking, and even obnoxious attitude, as the
orbicularis oculi
The orbicularis oculi is a muscle in the face that closes the eyelids. It arises from the nasal part of the frontal bone, from the frontal process of the maxilla in front of the lacrimal groove, and from the anterior surface and borders of a short ...
(the muscle near that upper eye corner) on the face of the emoji does not move, and the
orbicularis oris
In human anatomy, the orbicularis oris muscle is a complex of muscles in the lips that encircles the mouth.
It is a sphincter, or circular muscle, but it is actually composed of four independent quadrants that interlace and give only an appearance ...
(the one near the mouth) tightens, which is believed to be a sign of suppressing a smile.
The second problem relates to technology and branding. When an author of a message picks an emoji from a list, it is normally encoded in a non-graphical manner during the transmission, and if the author and the reader do not use the same software or operating system for their devices, the reader's device may visualize the same emoji in a different way. Small changes to a character's look may completely alter its perceived meaning with the receiver. As an example, in April 2020, British actress and presenter
Jameela Jamil
Jameela Alia Jamil (born 25 February 1986) is a British actress and presenter. She began her career on Channel 4, where she hosted a pop culture series in the T4 strand from 2009 until 2012. She then became the radio host of ''The Official Cha ...
posted a tweet from her iPhone using the Face with Hand Over Mouth emoji (🤭) as part of a comment on people shopping for food during the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
. On Apple's
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
, the emoji expression is neutral and pensive, but on other platforms the emoji shows as a giggling face. Many fans were initially upset thinking that she, as a well off celebrity, was mocking poor people, but this was not her intended meaning.
Researchers from German Studies Institute at
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
The Ruhr University Bochum (, ) is a public research university located in the southern hills of the central Ruhr area, Bochum, Germany. It was founded in 1962 as the first new public university in Germany after World War II. Instruction began in ...
found that most people can easily understand an emoji when it replaces a word directly – like an icon for a rose instead of the word 'rose' – yet it takes people about 50 percent longer to comprehend the emoji.
Variation and ambiguity
Emoji characters vary slightly between platforms within the limits in meaning defined by the Unicode specification, as companies have tried to provide artistic presentations of ideas and objects.
For example, following an Apple tradition, the calendar emoji on Apple products always shows July 17, the date in 2002 Apple announced its
iCal
Calendar is a personal calendar app made by Apple Inc. that runs on both the macOS desktop operating system and the iOS mobile operating system. It offers online cloud backup of calendars using Apple's iCloud service, or can synchronize with ...
calendar application for
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
. This led some Apple product users to initially nickname July 17 "
World Emoji Day
World Emoji Day is an annual unofficial holiday occurring on 17 July, intended to celebrate emoji; in the years since the earliest observance, it has become a popular date to make product or other announcements and releases relating to emoji.
...
". Other emoji fonts show different dates or do not show a specific one.
Some Apple emoji are very similar to the SoftBank standard, since SoftBank was the first Japanese network on which the iPhone launched. For example, is female on Apple and SoftBank standards but male or gender-neutral on others.
Journalists have noted that the ambiguity of emoji has allowed them to take on culture-specific meanings not present in the original
glyph
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
s. For example, has been described as being used in English-language communities to signify "non-caring fabulousness"
and "anything from shutting
haters down to a sense of accomplishment".
Unicode manuals sometimes provide notes on auxiliary meanings of an object to guide designers on how emoji may be used, for example noting that some users may expect to stand for "a reserved or ticketed seat, as for an airplane, train, or theater".
Controversial emoji
Some emoji have been involved in controversy due to their perceived meanings. Multiple arrests and imprisonments have followed usage of pistol (), knife (), and bomb () emoji in ways that authorities deemed credible threats.
In the lead-up to the
2016 Summer Olympics
The 2016 Summer Olympics ( pt, Jogos Olímpicos de Verão de 2016), officially the Games of the XXXI Olympiad ( pt, Jogos da XXXI Olimpíada) and also known as Rio 2016, was an international multi-sport event held from 5 to 21 August 20 ...
, the Unicode Consortium considered proposals to add several Olympic-related emoji, including medals and events such as
handball
Handball (also known as team handball, European handball or Olympic handball) is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each (six outcourt players and a goalkeeper) pass a ball using their hands with the aim of throwing it into the g ...
and
water polo
Water polo is a competitive team sport played in water between two teams of seven players each. The game consists of four quarters in which the teams attempt to score goals by throwing the ball into the opposing team's goal. The team with the ...
.
By October 2015, these candidate emoji included "
rifle
A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting, with a barrel that has a helical pattern of grooves ( rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus on accuracy, rifles are typically designed to be held with ...
" () and "
modern pentathlon
The modern pentathlon is an Olympic sport consisting of fencing (one-touch épée), freestyle swimming, equestrian show jumping, pistol shooting, and cross country running. The event is inspired by the traditional pentathlon held during the anci ...
" ().
However, in 2016, Apple and Microsoft opposed these two emoji, and the characters were added without emoji presentations, meaning that software is expected to render them in black-and-white rather than color, and emoji-specific software such as onscreen keyboards will generally not include them. In addition, while the original incarnations of the modern pentathlon emoji depicted its five events, including a man pointing a gun, the final glyph contains a person riding a horse, along with a laser pistol target in the corner.
On August 1, 2016,
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
announced that in
iOS 10
iOS 10 is the iOS version history, tenth major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc., being the successor to iOS 9. It was announced at the company's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Worldwide Developers Conf ...
, the
pistol
A pistol is a handgun, more specifically one with the chamber integral to its gun barrel, though in common usage the two terms are often used interchangeably. The English word was introduced in , when early handguns were produced in Europe, an ...
emoji () would be changed from a realistic
revolver
A revolver (also called a wheel gun) is a repeating handgun that has at least one barrel and uses a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers (each holding a single cartridge) for firing. Because most revolver models hold up to six roun ...
to a
water pistol
Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as a s ...
.
Conversely, the following day, Microsoft pushed out an update to
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...
that changed its longstanding depiction of the pistol emoji as a toy
ray-gun
A raygun is a science-fiction directed-energy weapon that releases energy, usually with destructive effect.Jeff Prucher, ''Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction,'' Oxford University Press, 2007, page 162 They have various ...
to a real revolver.
Microsoft stated that the change was made to bring the glyph more in line with industry-standard designs and customer expectations.
By 2018, most major platforms such as Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Facebook, and Twitter had transitioned their rendering of the pistol emoji to match Apple's water gun implementation. Apple's change of depiction from a realistic gun to a toy gun was criticised by, among others, the editor of
Emojipedia
Emojipedia is an emoji reference website which documents the meaning and common usage of emoji characters in the Unicode Standard. Most commonly described as an emoji encyclopedia or emoji dictionary, Emojipedia also publishes articles and provi ...
, because it could lead to messages appearing differently to the receiver than the sender had intended. ''
Insider
''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German publ ...
'' Rob Price said it created the potential for "serious miscommunication across different platforms", and asked "What if a joke sent from an Apple user to a Google user is misconstrued because of differences in rendering? Or if a genuine threat sent by a Google user to an Apple user goes unreported because it is taken as a joke?"
The
eggplant (aubergine) emoji () has also seen controversy due to it being used to represent a
penis
A penis (plural ''penises'' or ''penes'' () is the primary sexual organ that male animals use to inseminate females (or hermaphrodites) during copulation. Such organs occur in many animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate, but males do n ...
.
Beginning in December 2014, the
hashtag
A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash (also known as pound or octothorpe) sign, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Instagram as a form of user-generated ...
began to rise to popularity on
Instagram
Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...
for use in marking photos featuring clothed or unclothed penises.
This became such a popular trend that, beginning in April 2015, Instagram disabled the ability to search for not only the tag, but also other eggplant-containing hashtags, including simply and .
The
peach
The peach (''Prunus persica'') is a deciduous tree first domesticated and cultivated in Zhejiang province of Eastern China. It bears edible juicy fruits with various characteristics, most called peaches and others (the glossy-skinned, non-fu ...
emoji () has likewise been used as a euphemistic icon for
buttocks
The buttocks (singular: buttock) are two rounded portions of the exterior anatomy of most mammals, located on the posterior of the pelvic region. In humans, the buttocks are located between the lower back and the perineum. They are composed ...
, with a 2016
Emojipedia
Emojipedia is an emoji reference website which documents the meaning and common usage of emoji characters in the Unicode Standard. Most commonly described as an emoji encyclopedia or emoji dictionary, Emojipedia also publishes articles and provi ...
analysis revealing that only seven percent of English language
tweets with the peach emoji refer to the actual fruit. In 2016,
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
attempted to redesign the emoji to less resemble buttocks. This was met with fierce backlash in beta testing, and Apple reversed its decision by the time it went live to the public.
In December 2017, a lawyer in
Delhi
Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...
,
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, threatened to file a lawsuit against
WhatsApp
WhatsApp (also called WhatsApp Messenger) is an internationally available freeware, cross-platform, centralized instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by American company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook). It allows us ...
for allowing use of the
middle finger
The middle finger, long finger, second finger, third finger, toll finger or tall man is the third digit of the human hand, located between the index finger and the ring finger. It is typically the longest digit. In anatomy, it is also called ...
emoji () on the basis that the company is "directly abetting the use of an offensive,
lewd
Lascivious behavior is sexual behavior or conduct that is considered crude and offensive, or contrary to local moral or other standards of appropriate behavior. In this sense "lascivious" is similar in meaning to "lewd", "indecent", "lecherous", ...
, obscene gesture" in violation of the
Indian Penal Code
The Indian Penal Code (IPC) is the official criminal code of India. It is a comprehensive code intended to cover all substantive aspects of criminal law. The code was drafted on the recommendations of first law commission of India established in ...
.
Emoji implementation
Early implementation in Japan
Various, often incompatible, character encoding schemes were developed by the different mobile providers in Japan for their own emoji sets.
For example, the extended
Shift JIS
Shift JIS (Shift Japanese Industrial Standards, also SJIS, MIME name Shift_JIS, known as PCK in Solaris contexts) is a character encoding for the Japanese language, originally developed by a Japanese company called ASCII Corporation in conjunctio ...
representation F797 is used for a
convenience store
A convenience store, convenience shop, corner store or corner shop is a small retail business that stocks a range of everyday items such as coffee, groceries, snack foods, confectionery, soft drinks, ice creams, tobacco products, lottery ticket ...
(🏪) by SoftBank, but for a
wristwatch
A watch is a portable timepiece intended to be carried or worn by a person. It is designed to keep a consistent movement despite the motions caused by the person's activities. A wristwatch is designed to be worn around the wrist, attached by ...
(⌚️) by KDDI.
All three vendors also developed schemes for encoding their emoji in the Unicode
Private Use Area
In Unicode, a Private Use Area (PUA) is a range of code points that, by definition, will not be assigned characters by the Unicode Consortium. Three private use areas are defined: one in the Basic Multilingual Plane (), and one each in, and nearl ...
: DoCoMo, for example, used the range U+E63E through U+E757.
Versions of
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
prior to 5.1 encoded emoji in the SoftBank private use area.
Unicode support considerations
Most, but not all, emoji are included in the
Supplementary Multilingual Plane
In the Unicode standard, a plane is a continuous group of 65,536 (216) code points. There are 17 planes, identified by the numbers 0 to 16, which corresponds with the possible values 00–1016 of the first two positions in six position hexadecimal ...
(SMP) of Unicode, which is also used for ancient scripts, some modern scripts such as
Adlam or
Osage The Osage Nation, a Native American tribe in the United States, is the source of most other terms containing the word "osage".
Osage can also refer to:
* Osage language, a Dhaegin language traditionally spoken by the Osage Nation
* Osage (Unicode b ...
, and special-use characters such as
Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols
Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols is a Unicode block comprising styled forms of Latin alphabet, Latin and Greek alphabet, Greek letters and decimal numerical digit, digits that enable mathematicians to denote different notions with different ...
. Some systems introduced prior to the advent of Unicode emoji were only designed to support characters in the
Basic Multilingual Plane
In the Unicode standard, a plane is a continuous group of 65,536 (216) code points. There are 17 planes, identified by the numbers 0 to 16, which corresponds with the possible values 00–1016 of the first two positions in six position hexadecimal ...
(BMP), on the assumption that non-BMP characters would rarely be encountered,
although failure to properly handle characters outside of the BMP precludes Unicode compliance.
The introduction of Unicode emoji created an incentive for vendors to improve their support for non-BMP characters.
The Unicode Consortium notes that "
cause of the demand for emoji, many implementations have upgraded their Unicode support substantially", also helping support for minority languages that use those features.
Color support
Any operating system that supports adding additional fonts to the system can add an emoji-supporting font. However, inclusion of colorful emoji in existing font formats requires dedicated support for color
glyphs
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
. Not all operating systems have support for color fonts, so in these cases emoji might have to be rendered as black-and-white line art or not at all. There are four different formats used for multi-color glyphs in an
SFNT
SFNT is a font file format which can contain other fonts, such as PostScript, TrueType, OpenType, Web Open Font Format (WOFF) fonts and other. SFNT stands for '' spline font'' or ''scalable font'', and was originally developed for TrueType fonts o ...
font,
not all of which are necessarily supported by a given operating system library or software package such as a web browser or graphical program.
This means that color fonts may need to be supplied in several formats to be usable on multiple operating systems, or in multiple applications.
Implementation by different platforms and vendors
Apple first introduced emoji to their desktop operating system with the release of
OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
10.7 Lion, in 2011. Users can view emoji characters sent through email and messaging applications, which are commonly shared by mobile users, as well as any other application. Users can create emoji symbols using the "Characters" special input panel from almost any native application by selecting the "Edit" menu and pulling down to "Special Characters", or by the key combination . The emoji keyboard was first available in Japan with the release of
iPhone OS version 2.2 in 2008. The emoji keyboard was not officially made available outside of Japan until
iOS version 5.0. From iPhone OS 2.2 through to iOS 4.3.5 (2011), those outside Japan could access the keyboard but had to use a third-party app to enable it. Apple has revealed that the "face with tears of joy" is the most popular emoji among English speaking Americans. On second place is the "heart" emoji followed by the "Loudly Crying Face".
An update for
Windows 7
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...
and Windows Server 2008 R2 brought a subset of the monochrome Unicode set to those operating systems as part of the ''Segoe UI Symbol'' font.
As of
Windows 8.1
Windows 8.1 is a release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 27, 2013, and broadly released for retail sale on October 17, 2013, about a year after the retail release of its pre ...
Preview, the ''Segoe UI Emoji'' font is included, which supplies full-color pictographs. The plain Segoe UI font lacks emoji characters, whereas Segoe UI Symbol and Segoe UI Emoji include them. Emoji characters are accessed through the onscreen keyboard's key, or through the physical keyboard shortcut .
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
and
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
replace all Unicode emoji used on their websites with their own custom graphics. Prior to October 2017, Facebook had different sets for the main site and for its
Messenger
''MESSENGER'' was a NASA robotic space probe that orbited the planet Mercury between 2011 and 2015, studying Mercury's chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field. The name is a backronym for "Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geoche ...
service, where only the former provides complete coverage. Messenger now uses Apple emoji on iOS, and the main Facebook set elsewhere.
Facebook reactions
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
are only partially compatible with standard emoji.
Modifiers
Emoji versus text presentation
Unicode defines
variation sequences for many of its emoji to indicate their desired presentation.
Specifying the desired presentation is done by following the base emoji with either U+FE0E VARIATION SELECTOR-15 (VS15) for text or U+FE0F VARIATION SELECTOR-16 (VS16) for emoji-style.
Skin color
Five symbol modifier characters were added with Unicode 8.0 to provide a range of skin tones for human emoji. These modifiers are called EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-1-2, , , , and (U+1F3FB–U+1F3FF): 🏻 🏼 🏽 🏾 🏿. They are based on the
Fitzpatrick scale
The Fitzpatrick scale (also Fitzpatrick skin typing test; or Fitzpatrick phototyping scale) is a numerical classification schema for human skin color. It was developed in 1975 by American dermatologist Thomas B. Fitzpatrick as a way to estimate th ...
for classifying human skin color. Human emoji that are not followed by one of these five modifiers should be displayed in a generic, non-realistic skin tone, such as bright yellow (
■), blue (
■), or gray (
■).
Non-human emoji (like ) are unaffected by the Fitzpatrick modifiers.
, Fitzpatrick modifiers can be used with 131 human emoji spread across seven blocks:
Dingbats,
Emoticons
An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a person's feelings, m ...
,
Miscellaneous Symbols
Miscellaneous Symbols is a Unicode block (U+2600–U+26FF) containing glyphs representing concepts from a variety of categories: astrological, astronomical, chess, dice, musical notation, political symbols, recycling, religious symbols, Bagua, ...
,
Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs
Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs is a Unicode block containing meteorological and astronomical symbols, emoji characters largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' implementations of Shift JIS, and characters originally from ...
,
Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs
Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs is a Unicode block containing emoji characters. It extends the set of symbols included in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block. It also includes Typikon symbols.
Emoji
The Unicode 14.0 Supplementa ...
,
Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A
Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A is a Unicode block containing emoji characters. It extends the set of symbols included in the Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs block.
All of the characters in the Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A block a ...
, and
Transport and Map Symbols
Transport and Map Symbols is a Unicode block containing transportation and map icons, largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' emoji implementations of Shift JIS, and to encode characters in the Wingdings and Wingdings 2 chara ...
.
The following table shows both the Unicode characters and the open-source "Twemoji" images, designed by
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
:
Joining
![Zero Width (Non)Joiner](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Zero_Width_%28Non%29Joiner.svg)
Implementations may use a
zero-width joiner
The zero-width joiner (ZWJ, ) is a non-printing character used in the computerized typesetting of writing systems in which the shape or positioning of a grapheme depends on its relation to other graphemes (complex scripts), such as the Arabic s ...
(ZWJ) between multiple emoji to make them behave like a single, unique emoji character.
For example, the sequence , , , , (👨👩👧) could be displayed as a single emoji depicting a family with a man, a woman, and a girl if the implementation supports it. Systems that do not support it would ignore the ZWJs, displaying only the three base emoji in order (👨👩👧).
Unicode previously maintained a catalog of emoji ZWJ sequences that were supported on at least one commonly available platform. The consortium has since switched to documenting sequences that are ''recommended for general interchange'' (RGI). These are clusters that emoji fonts are expected to include as part of the standard.
The ZWJ has also been used to implement platform specific emojis. For example, in 2016 Microsoft released a series of Ninja Cat emojis for their
Windows 10 Anniversary Update. The sequence , , were used to create Ninja Cat (🐱👤) .
Ninja Cat and variants were removed in late 2021's ''Fluent'' emoji redesign.
In Unicode
Unicode represents emoji using 1,424 characters spread across 24 blocks, of which 26 are
Regional indicator symbol
The regional indicator symbols are a set of 26 alphabetic Unicode characters (A–Z) intended to be used to encode ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 two-letter country codes in a way that allows optional special treatment.
These were defined by October 2010 as p ...
s that combine in pairs to form flag emoji, and 12 (#, * and 0–9) are base characters for
keycap
A keycap is a small cover of plastic, metal, or other material placed over the keyswitch of a computer keyboard. Keycaps are often illustrated to indicate the key function or alphanumeric character they correspond to. Early keyboards were manu ...
emoji sequences:
637 of the 768 code points in the
Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs
Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs is a Unicode block containing meteorological and astronomical symbols, emoji characters largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' implementations of Shift JIS, and characters originally from ...
block are considered emoji. 242 of the 256 code points in the
Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs
Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs is a Unicode block containing emoji characters. It extends the set of symbols included in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block. It also includes Typikon symbols.
Emoji
The Unicode 14.0 Supplementa ...
block are considered emoji. All of the 107 code points in the
Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A
Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A is a Unicode block containing emoji characters. It extends the set of symbols included in the Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs block.
All of the characters in the Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A block a ...
block are considered emoji. All of the 80 code points in the
Emoticons
An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a person's feelings, m ...
block are considered emoji. 105 of the 118 code points in the
Transport and Map Symbols
Transport and Map Symbols is a Unicode block containing transportation and map icons, largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' emoji implementations of Shift JIS, and to encode characters in the Wingdings and Wingdings 2 chara ...
block are considered emoji. 83 of the 256 code points in the
Miscellaneous Symbols
Miscellaneous Symbols is a Unicode block (U+2600–U+26FF) containing glyphs representing concepts from a variety of categories: astrological, astronomical, chess, dice, musical notation, political symbols, recycling, religious symbols, Bagua, ...
block are considered emoji. 33 of the 192 code points in the
Dingbats block are considered emoji.
Additional emoji can be found in the following Unicode blocks:
Arrows (8 code points considered emoji),
Basic Latin (12),
CJK Symbols and Punctuation
CJK Symbols and Punctuation is a Unicode block containing symbols and punctuation used for writing the Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. It also contains one Chinese character.
Block
The block has variation sequences defined for East ...
(2),
Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement
Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement is a Unicode block consisting of Latin alphabet characters and Arabic numerals enclosed in circles, ovals or boxes, used for a variety of purposes. It is encoded in the range U+1F100–U+1F1FF in the Supplem ...
(41),
Enclosed Alphanumerics
Enclosed Alphanumerics is a Unicode block of Typography, typographical symbols of an alphanumeric within a circle, a bracket or other not-closed enclosure, or ending in a full stop.
It is currently fully allocated. Within the Basic Multili ...
(1),
Enclosed CJK Letters and Months
Enclosed CJK Letters and Months is a Unicode block containing circled and parenthesized Katakana, Hangul, and CJK ideographs. Also included in the block are miscellaneous glyphs that would more likely fit in CJK Compatibility or Enclosed Alpha ...
(2),
Enclosed Ideographic Supplement
Enclosed Ideographic Supplement is a Unicode block containing forms of characters and words from Chinese, Japanese and Korean enclosed within or stylised as squares, brackets, or circles. It contains three such characters containing one or more ...
(15),
General Punctuation
General Punctuation is a Unicode block containing punctuation, spacing, and formatting characters for use with all scripts and writing systems. Included are the defined-width spaces, joining formats, directional formats, smart quotes, archaic an ...
(2),
Geometric Shapes
Geometric Shapes is a Unicode block of 96 symbols at code point range U+25A0–25FF.
U+25A0–U+25CF
The BLACK CIRCLE is displayed when typing in a password field, in order to hide characters from a screen recorder or shoulder surfing.
U+2 ...
(8),
Geometric Shapes Extended (13),
Latin-1 Supplement
The Latin-1 Supplement (also called C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement) is the second Unicode block in the Unicode standard. It encodes the upper range of ISO 8859-1: 80 (U+0080) - FF (U+00FF). C1 Controls (0080–009F) are not graphic. Th ...
(2),
Letterlike Symbols
Letterlike Symbols is a Unicode block containing 80 characters which are constructed mainly from the glyphs of one or more letters. In addition to this block, Unicode includes full styled mathematical alphabets, although Unicode does not expli ...
(2),
Mahjong Tiles
Mahjong tiles () are tiles of Chinese origin that are used to play mahjong as well as mahjong solitaire and other games. Although they are most commonly tiles, they may refer to playing cards with similar contents as well.
Development
The ...
(1),
Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows
Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows is a Unicode block containing arrows and geometric shapes with various fills, astrological symbols, technical symbols, intonation marks, and others.
Block
Emoji
The Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows block con ...
(7),
Miscellaneous Technical
Miscellaneous Technical is a Unicode block ranging from U+2300 to U+23FF, which contains various common symbols which are related to and used in the various technical, programming language, and academic professions. For example:
* Symbol ⌂ (HT ...
(18),
Playing Cards
A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a fi ...
(1), and
Supplemental Arrows-B
Supplemental Arrows-B is a Unicode block containing miscellaneous arrows, arrow tails, crossing arrows used in knot descriptions, curved arrows, and harpoons.
Block
Emoji
The Supplemental Arrows-B block contains two emoji:
U+2934–U+2935.
...
(2).
Additions
Some vendors, most notably Microsoft, Samsung and
HTC
HTC Corporation ( zh, t=宏達國際電子股份有限公司, s=宏达国际电子股份有限公司, p=Hóngdá Guójì Diànzǐ Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī, first=t) or High Tech Computer Corporation, (literally ''Hongda International Electron ...
, add emoji presentation to some other existing Unicode characters or coin their own ZWJ sequences.
Microsoft displays all
Mahjong tiles
Mahjong tiles () are tiles of Chinese origin that are used to play mahjong as well as mahjong solitaire and other games. Although they are most commonly tiles, they may refer to playing cards with similar contents as well.
Development
The ...
(U+1F000‥2B, not just ) and alternative card suits (, , , ) as emoji. They also support additional pencils (, ) and a heart-shaped bullet ().
While only is officially an emoji, Microsoft and Samsung add the other three directions as well (, , ).
Both vendors pair the standard checked ballot box emoji with its crossed variant , but only Samsung also has the empty ballot box .
Samsung almost completely covers the rest of the
Miscellaneous Symbols
Miscellaneous Symbols is a Unicode block (U+2600–U+26FF) containing glyphs representing concepts from a variety of categories: astrological, astronomical, chess, dice, musical notation, political symbols, recycling, religious symbols, Bagua, ...
block (U+2600‥FF) as emoji, which includes Chess pieces, game die faces, some traffic sign as well as genealogical and astronomical symbols for instance.
HTC supports most additional pictographs from the
Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs
Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs is a Unicode block containing meteorological and astronomical symbols, emoji characters largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' implementations of Shift JIS, and characters originally from ...
(U+1F300‥5FF) and
Transport and Map Symbols
Transport and Map Symbols is a Unicode block containing transportation and map icons, largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' emoji implementations of Shift JIS, and to encode characters in the Wingdings and Wingdings 2 chara ...
(U+1F680‥FF) blocks. Some of them are also shown as emoji on Samsung devices.
The open source projects Emojidex and Emojitwo are trying to cover all of these extensions established by major vendors.
In popular culture
* The 2009 film ''
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...
'' featured a robot named GERTY who communicates using a neutral-toned synthesized voice together with a screen showing emoji representing the corresponding emotional content.
* In 2014, the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
acquired an emoji version of
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American people, American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his bes ...
's ''
Moby Dick
''Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'' is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship ''Pequod'', for revenge against Moby Dick, the giant whit ...
'' created by Fred Benenson.
* A musical called ''
Emojiland
Emojiland is a pop musical written by Keith Harrison Dworkin and Laura Schein. It premiered off-Broadway on January 19, 2020, at the Duke on 42nd Street. It centers around a group of emojis living in the world of a smartphone on the eve of a s ...
'' premiered at Rockwell Table & Stage in Los Angeles in May 2016,
after selected songs were presented at the same venue in 2015.
* In October 2016, the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
acquired the original collection of emoji distributed by NTT DoCoMo in 1999.
* In November 2016, the first emoji-themed convention, Emojicon, was held in San Francisco.
* In March 2017, the first episode of
the fifth season of ''Samurai Jack'' featured alien characters who communicate in emoji.
* In April 2017, the ''
Doctor Who
''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the u ...
'' episode "
Smile
A smile is a facial expression formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth. Some smiles include a contraction of the muscles at the corner of the eyes, an action known as a Duchenne smile.
Among humans, a smile expresses ...
" featured nanobots called Vardy, which communicate through robotic avatars that use emoji (without any accompanying speech output) and are sometimes referred to by the time travelers as "Emojibots".
* On July 28, 2017,
Sony Pictures Animation
Sony Pictures Animation Inc. is an American animation studio owned by Sony Entertainment's Sony Pictures Entertainment through their Motion Picture Group division and founded on May 9, 2002. The studio's films are distributed worldwide by Son ...
released ''
The Emoji Movie
''The Emoji Movie'' is a 2017 American computer-animated science fiction comedy film produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. Directed by Tony Leondis, who wrote the script with Eri ...
'', a 3D computer animated movie featuring the voices of
Patrick Stewart
Sir Patrick Stewart (born 13 July 1940) is an English actor who has a career spanning seven decades in various stage productions, television, film and video games. He has been nominated for Olivier, Tony, Golden Globe, Emmy, and Screen Actor ...
,
Christina Aguilera
Christina María Aguilera (; ; born December 18, 1980) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and television personality. Known for her four-octave vocal range and ability to sustain high notes, she has been referred to as the " Voice of ...
,
Sofía Vergara
Sofía Margarita Vergara Vergara (; born July 10, 1972) is a Colombian and American actress and model. She was the highest paid actress in American television from 2013 to 2020. ,
Anna Faris
Anna Kay Faris (; born November 29, 1976) is an American actress. She rose to prominence for her work in comedic roles, particularly the lead part of Cindy Campbell in the ''Scary Movie'' film series (2000–2006). She has appeared in a number o ...
,
T. J. Miller
Todd Joseph Miller (born June 4, 1981) is an American actor and comedian.
In 2008, he made his acting debut in ''Cloverfield'', and from 2010 to 2014, he voiced Tuffnut Thorston in the first two ''How to Train Your Dragon'' films. From 2014 to ...
, and other notable actors and comedians.
* On September 3, 2021,
Drake
Drake may refer to:
Animals
* A male duck
People and fictional characters
* Drake (surname), a list of people and fictional characters with the family name
* Drake (given name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name
* ...
released his sixth studio
album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...
, ''
Certified Lover Boy
''Certified Lover Boy'' is the sixth studio album by Canadian rapper and singer Drake, released on September 3, 2021, by OVO Sound and Republic Records. Its production was handled by frequent collaborators 40, Nineteen85, PartyNextDoor, OZ, a ...
'' with album cover art featuring twelve emoji of pregnant women in varying
clothing
Clothing (also known as clothes, apparel, and attire) are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural ...
colors, hair colors and skin tones.
See also
*
Blob emoji
Blob emoji is an implementation of emojis by Google featured in its Android mobile operating system between 2013 and 2017.
History
Google introduced the blobs as part of its Android KitKat mobile operating system in 2013. The next year, ...
*
Emojipedia
Emojipedia is an emoji reference website which documents the meaning and common usage of emoji characters in the Unicode Standard. Most commonly described as an emoji encyclopedia or emoji dictionary, Emojipedia also publishes articles and provi ...
*
Emojli
Emojli was a social application for iOS and Android, created by YouTuber and web developer Tom Scott, and YouTuber and broadcast engineer Matt Gray. Usernames could contain only emoji and users could only communicate using emoji within the ap ...
*
Hieroglyphics
Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...
*
iConji
iConji is a free pictographic communication system based on an open, visual vocabulary of characters with built-in translations for most major languages.
In May 2010 iConji Messenger was released with support for Apple iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod) ...
*
Kaomoji
An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a person's feelings, m ...
*
Pictogram
A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and ...
Notes
References
Further reading
*
External links
Unicode Technical Report #51: Unicode emojiEmoji Symbolsnbsp;– the original proposals for encoding of Emoji symbols as Unicode characters
Background data for Unicode proposalemojitracker– list of most popularly used emoji on the Twitter platform; updated in real-time
{{Portal bar, 1990s, Internet, Japan, Technology, Writing
Computer-related introductions in 1997
Computer icons
Internet culture
Internet slang
Japanese inventions
Japanese writing system terms
Japanese writing system
Online chat
Pictograms