Emoji

An emoji (/ɪˈmoʊdʒi/ im-OH-jee) is a small picture used in text messages and on websites. People use emoji to show feelings that might be hard to express with just words. They can also stand for objects or ideas, making messages more fun and easy to understand.

The first emoji were created by companies in Japan in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The word emoji comes from the Japanese words for "picture" (e) and "character" (moji). Even though it sounds like "emotion," that similarity is just a coincidence.

Emoji became very popular around the world in the 2010s when groups like Unicode started including them in computer systems. Today, emoji are a big part of everyday life in the West and many other places. In 2015, the FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY emoji was chosen as the word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries, showing just how important these little pictures have become.

History

Predecessors

Main article: Emoticon

The emoji came after the emoticon, a simple idea from 1982 by computer scientist Scott Fahlman. He suggested using text symbols like :-) and :-( to show feelings in messages. People had thought about replacing language since the 1960s. Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov once said he wished there was a special sign for a smile. It didn’t become popular until the 1990s when companies in Japan, America, and Europe started working on Fahlman’s idea. Student Bruce Parello added picture symbols to a learning system in 1972, but it wasn’t widely used. Fahlman’s emoticons used common letters to replace words and express feelings, and they are considered the true start of emoticons.

The IBM PC included two simple smiling faces in 1981. Microsoft’s Wingdings font from 1990 let people send picture symbols in messages, but only if their devices had that font. In 1995, a French newspaper said a new phone from Alcatel showed a digital smiley face on its welcome screen.

Early emoji sets (1980s–1990s)

The first emoji sets—collections of pictures for messages—were created in the late 1980s and 1990s, but it’s hard to know exactly when because records were poor. Some thought Japan’s DoCoMo had the first set in 1999, but later finds showed Japan’s SoftBank had a set in 1997, and even earlier sets existed on devices from Sharp and NEC in the early 1990s.

SoftBank’s 1997 set had 90 emoji on its J-Phone model. These were small, black-and-white pictures of numbers, sports, time, moon phases, and weather. It even included a Pile of Poo emoji. But because few people bought this phone, these emoji weren’t used much.

DoCoMo’s set from 1999, made by Shigetaka Kurita, became more famous. He created 176 brightly colored emoji for mobile phones. He got ideas from Japanese comics, Chinese characters, and weather signs. These emoji included faces like smileys, inspired by Japanese art. Kurita’s work is even in New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.

Other companies like Nokia also added simple picture symbols to their phones in the 1990s. Another Japanese phone brand, au by KDDI, also made its own emoji set.

Growth of emoji sets (2000–2007)

Over the next decade, emoji became popular in Japan, but companies didn’t work together to make one set everyone used.

International rules for text, called Unicode, had existed since 1993, but they didn’t include Japan’s mobile emoji. Unicode added some picture symbols from other sources, like old computer codes and special fonts. In the early 2000s, a man named Nicolas Loufrani created a big collection of smileys and made a tool to add them to emails and messages. By 2003, it had grown to include over 800 smileys. Companies like MSN Messenger and BlackBerry later made their own emoji sets after seeing how popular they were.

Beginnings of Unicode emoji (2007–2014)

In 2007, Google started asking for emoji to become an official part of Unicode so everyone could use them. In 2010, Unicode agreed and added 625 new emoji. Google and Apple added emoji to their products in 2008, using special codes to show them. Over time, more emoji were added, including ones from old Japanese TV symbols and other sources.

UTS #51 and modern emoji (2015–present)

In 2015, Unicode made new rules to help emoji work better across different devices. This included adding skin tone choices for emoji. More emoji were added each year, like sports gear, food, and new faces. By 2017, there were over 2,600 Unicode emoji.

Cultural influence

In 2015, a smiling face emoji was chosen as the word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries because it was used so much. Some emoji show Japanese culture, like a bowing person or symbols for beginners. Emoji are also used in music, movies, and even to talk about important topics like health and diseases. Researchers have studied how people use emoji and found they can show feelings and even help computers understand jokes.

Linguistic function of emoji

Emoji help show feelings in messages. People often use them to make their words clearer or to add a happy or excited feeling. They don’t mean much on their own but add extra meaning to what someone is saying.

How people use emoji can change based on who they are and where they live. Some studies show that women use emoji more often than men, while men might use a bigger variety of them. Emoji use can also differ between cultures, with some places favoring happy emoji and others using more playful or excited ones. Repeating the same emoji, like sending several laughing faces, can make a message feel even stronger or more fun.

Emoji communication problems

Sometimes, emoji can cause confusion. When someone sends an emoji, they might think it means one thing, but the person receiving it might see it differently. This can happen for a few reasons.

First, different people might interpret the same emoji in different ways based on their own culture or background. For example, in some places, a simple smiley face might be used to show dislike or sarcasm because of how the eyes or mouth looks.

Second, the way an emoji looks can change depending on the device or software being used. If someone sends an emoji from one phone or app and the receiver sees it on a different phone or app, it might look different. This can lead to misunderstandings. For example, an emoji that looks neutral on one phone might look happy on another, causing the receiver to think something different from what was intended.

Because of these issues, emoji can sometimes be tricky to understand, and it’s important to think about how others might see them.

Emoji implementation

Main article: Implementation of emoji

Different phone companies in Japan made their own ways to show special pictures in messages. For example, one company might use a certain code to show a shop, while another company used the same code to show a watch. These pictures were called emoji.

Later, a system called Unicode was made to help computers understand these pictures better. Most emoji are now part of this system. Some computers and programs needed updates to show these new pictures correctly. Because people loved emoji so much, many computers started getting better at showing all kinds of special characters, which also helped people who use less common languages.

When emoji were first added to computers, they were often shown in simple black and white. But now, many computers can show colorful emoji pictures. Different companies like Apple and Microsoft have their own ways of showing emoji. Apple first added emoji to its computers in 2011 and to its phones in Japan in 2008. Other countries got the emoji keyboard a few years later. On Windows computers, emoji were added in later versions, and you can find them by pressing special keys on the keyboard.

Websites like Facebook and Twitter sometimes use their own special pictures for emoji instead of the usual ones.

Modifiers

Unicode lets you choose how some emoji look. You can pick a colorful, fun style or a simple black-and-white style. This is done by adding special codes after the emoji.

You can also pick different skin colors for people emoji. There are five skin tone choices based on a skin color scale. If you don’t add a skin tone code, the emoji will show in a basic color like bright yellow. These skin tone choices work with many people emoji, but not with other symbols like a fuel pump.

Sometimes, emoji can join together to make a new picture. For example, you can put a man emoji, a special code, a woman emoji, another code, and a girl emoji together to show a family. If the device doesn’t support this, it will just show the three separate emoji.

Sample emoji variation sequences

U+	2139	231B	26A0	2712	2764	1F004	1F21A
Default presentation	Text	Emoji	Text	Text	Text	Emoji	Emoji
Base code point	ℹ	⌛	⚠	✒	❤	🀄	🈚
Base+VS15 (text)	ℹ︎	⌛︎	⚠︎	✒︎	❤︎	🀄︎	🈚︎
Base+VS16 (emoji)	ℹ️	⌛️	⚠️	✒️	❤️	🀄️	🈚️
Twemoji image

Sample use of Fitzpatrick modifiers

	Text	Image
Without modifier	🧑
U+1F3FB 🏻 EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-1-2	🧑🏻
U+1F3FC 🏼 EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-3	🧑🏼
U+1F3FD 🏽 EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-4	🧑🏽
U+1F3FE 🏾 EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-5	🧑🏾
U+1F3FF 🏿 EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-6	🧑🏿

In Unicode

Main article: List of emoji

Unicode 17.0 includes 3,953 emoji using 1,438 characters across 24 blocks. Some of these blocks, like Dingbats, Emoticons, and Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs, have many emoji. Others, such as Regional indicator symbols, help create flag emoji when used in pairs.

Emoji can also be found in other Unicode blocks, including Basic Latin, CJK Symbols and Punctuation, and Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement, among others.

In popular culture

Emoji have appeared in many fun places! In the 2009 movie Moon, a robot named GERTY used emoji to show its feelings. In 2014, the Library of Congress got an emoji version of the book Moby Dick.

A musical named Emojiland started in Los Angeles in 2016. That same year, the Museum of Modern Art got the first set of emoji from 1999. In 2016, the first emoji convention called Emojicon happened in San Francisco.

In 2017, the TV show Samurai Jack had characters that talked using emoji. The Doctor Who episode "Smile" had tiny robots called Vardy that used emoji to talk.

In 2017, a movie called The Emoji Movie came out, with many famous voices. In 2021, singer Drake used emoji on the cover of his album Certified Lover Boy.