You, use them, love them, but Do You know them? – Emojis

The 21st century’s sensation “emojis” is the millennial’s adoption to communicate. It is fascinating that people can express their feelings through a few sets of emojis. Emoji is a combination of characters that represents facial expressions and ideas. We use it to illustrate our messages. Emojis have become part of our increasing reliance on non-verbal communication.

Let us know more about emojis and their history.

Emojis: A New Way to Communicate

Emojis are a must for millennials. It seems like millennials find it hard to text without an emoji. Or we can say, emojis complete the text. It holds special power, as it has the power to convey feelings and emotions. Emojis have become a necessary part of our daily communication. They are the new way to communicate. According to a source, 92% of the online population uses emojis daily. Emojis add personality to the text. They are non-verbal cues with emotional meanings.

There are several emojis present on our keyboard. There is a growing number of emoji professionals. The emoji is the birth of a new type of language. We can see on Instagram and Facebook; half of the captions contain emojis. Emoji is not only used by the millennials using lol, smh, tbh, but it is also widely used by all.  We use emojis to refer to things without using words.

The emoji contributes to cultural visibility and erasure. It even helps in clarifying the tone while texting. Earlier many considered emojis as a silly way to decorate messages but now it is used by almost everyone to express their feelings. 

Emoticon: The First Emoji

Emoji is a Japanese word that means ‘picture character’. Emojis came into the light during the 90s. The 90s kid knows it as emoticon. An emoticon is a combination of emotion and icon. The trends of emoticons were inspired by symbols used in a Japanese comic known as manga. The concept of emojis was invented by Shigetaka Kurita introducing it to a Japanese mobile company. Initially, all the big mobile companies rejected the idea of including emojis. But later emoji got popular and Kurita proved the power of his creation. 

The idea of emojis blossomed in Japan and rival companies started copying it. Soon emojis became popular worldwide. It was available outside Japan since the mid-2000s. Companies like Apple and Google started modifying emojis on their own. Apple has even added an emoji keyboard to iOS. Now presently we have well-structured and developed emojis. The universal coded character set is the international standard for text representation. 

There are some amazing facts out there about emojis. And they are:

• Some books consist of emojis.
• The “face with tears of joy” emoji was 2015’s word of the year.
• Emojis gained popularity worldwide because of Apple and Google. 
• The “face with tears of joy” emoji is the most widely emojis.
• The museum of modern art in New York city displays the first popular emojis.
• Peach emoji is one of the controversial emoji and only 7% of people who use these emoji refer to the actual fruit.

Difference Between Emoji and Emoticon

Emojis and emoticons are the same. The Emoji is a set of emoticons that are programmed into a cell phone. Emojis evolved from emoticons. Keyboard stroke shortcuts for emoticons are:

🙂 is a smiley

:( it represents the unhappy face

😉 is wink

😀 is a big smile

The emoticons were transformed later into emojis. So, we can also say that emojis visually represent emoticons. Emojis can be added to any document where you can text. You can get the emoji keyboard on your computer by using the following commands:

Windows 10: Click on the Windows logo key + period (.). 

Mac: press command + control + spacebar.

Emojis do not look the same on all platforms. There is a slight difference in the graphics.

Scott Fahlman: Father of the Smiley

Scott Fahlman is a computer scientist who introduced the world with a smiley emoticon. Fahlman used the smiley emoticon “🙂” for the first time on September 19, 1982. He thought using a smiley emoticon would help people on a message board and it did.  He suggested that using 🙂 would indicate happy or humorous posts on a message board and 🙁 would indicate serious posts. 

World Emoji Day

Emoji is the new visual language. World emoji day is an unofficial holiday that comes on July 17. The basic purpose of World emoji day is to spread enjoyment and promote the use of emojis. Jeremy Burge, the founder of Emojipedia created world emoji day. 

Apple, since 2017, uses world emoji day to announce upcoming emojis on iOS. 

Conclusion 

Currently, emojis have become a hot topic for research. Earlier where it was tough to get your emotions on the word, now emojis can do it easily. Emojis and emoticons are used as more effective ways to communicate. In a report, it has been shown that people send 10 billion emojis each day. When words are not appropriate, we cover them by using emojis. It has slowly converted into consistent designs across different platforms. Emojis are the fastest-growing digital language in the world. It also helped the community to communicate the modern causes and politics. Although there have been lawsuits regarding the use of emojis.

There are nearly 3000 universal emojis. Our digital communication is becoming more nuanced and colorful. Emoji is only the start of new-age communication. Emoji breaks down language barriers and enhances communication with description and clarity.

Some believe that emojis will be the future of communication. Well, emojis are, no doubt, useful but emojis cannot overlap the texts because true understanding requires words. 

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