An emote is an entry in a text-based chat client that indicates an action taking place. Unlike emoticons, they are not text art, and instead describe the action using words or images (similar to

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 conversat ...

). Emotes were created by

Shigetaka Kurita use both this parameter and , birth_date to display the person's date of birth, date of death, and age at death) --> , death_place = , death_cause = , body_discovered = , resting_place = , resting_place_coordinates = ...

in Japan, whose original idea was to create a way of communication using pictures. Kurita would draw pictures of himself for inspiration for the emotes he created. Nowadays emotes are a language of their own; emotes have progressed far past their original counterparts in 1999.

Overview

In most IRC chat clients, entering the command "/me" will print the user's name followed by whatever text follows. For example, if a user named Joe typed "/me jumps with joy", the client will print this as "Joe jumps with joy" in the chat window. Allow me to demonstrate... * Joe jumps with joy again. In chat media which do not support the "/me" command, it is conventional to read text surrounded by asterisks as if it were emoted. For example, reading "Joe: *jumps with joy*" in a chat log would suggest that the user had intended the words to be performed rather than spoken. In MMORPGs with visible

avatars Avatar (, ; ), is a concept within Hinduism that in Sanskrit literally means "descent". It signifies the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, goddess or spirit on Earth. The relative verb to "alight, to make one's appearance ...

, such as '' EverQuest'', ''

Asheron's Call ''Asheron's Call'' (AC) was a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) for Microsoft Windows PCs, developed and published by Turbine Entertainment Software. Though it was developed by the Turbine team (with Microsoft's ext ...

'', ''

Second Life ''Second Life'' is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Fra ...

'' and ''

World of Warcraft ''World of Warcraft'' (''WoW'') is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the ''Warcraft'' fantasy universe, ''World of Warcraft'' takes place within the world of Azeroth ...

'', certain commands entered through the chat interface will print a predefined /me emote to the chat window and cause the character to animate, and in some cases produce sound effects. For example, entering "/confused" into World of Warcraft's chat interface will play an animation on the user's avatar and print "You are hopelessly confused." in the chat window. With this being said, emotes are used primarily online in video games, and even more recently, on smartphones. An example of image-based emotes being used frequently is the chat feature on the streaming service Twitch. Twitch also allows users to upload animated emotes encoded with the

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...

format.

References

Sources

"History of emotes and why we use them": ''Reader's Digest''"History of emotes in gifs": ''PC Gamer''"Complete history of the emote": ''Wired''
*First game launching emotes is Free Fir

Online chat Pictograms {{Videogame-gameplay-stub

Overview

See also

References

Sources