On July 17, we celebrate World Emoji Day, a time to honour the wide variety of symbolic images that are utilised in digital communication. Emoticons (emotion + icon) were created to express emotions in text before emojis. Shigetaka Kurita coined the term “emoji,” which is a Japanese idiom that means “picture word,” in the 1990s. In an effort to appeal to teenagers, Kurita created these graphic phrases as a feature on their pagers while she was employed by the Japanese telecom company NTT Docomo.
Significance
World Emoji Day honours the importance of emoticons in today’s communication. These concise, emotive icons have become essential to digital interactions as a way to quickly transmit thoughts and emotions. Emojis provide a level of emotion and clarity to text messages and social media posts that words alone frequently cannot. Emojis are interchanged billions of times a day, demonstrating their widespread availability and adaptability. The ever-growing collection of over 1800 emojis, which span a wide range of topics from emotions to transportation, cuisine, animals, social media, weather, and body functions, is updated regularly on Emojipedia.org.
History
The emoticons that are used in text messages and online conversations are the source of emojis. The initial emoji is frequently regarded as the 1995 Pocket Bell pager’s heart sign. Inspired by Japanese comics, Shigetaka Kurita created the first set of emojis in 1999. These emojis, which were previously only available in Japan, were eventually added to the Unicode standard and became widely usable. Emojis’ popularity increased dramatically in 2007 when Apple added them to the iPhone. Different skin tones were introduced in 2015 in an effort to promote inclusivity and diversity. Emojis, which were originally an Asian phenomena, are now widely used in communication on a global scale. Celebration emojis are used to show joy for occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, and births. Emojis, which evolved from emoticons, are now used globally to improve digital communication.
Emojis & Emotional Expression
Emojis are colourful ideographs that resemble faces or other objects like food, animals, hand signals, and more. They are often larger than alphabetical characters. Emojis attempt to replace non-verbal communication as much as possible, and are frequently used in addition to written language. Emojis therefore serve as an excellent way to make up for the absence of non-verbal clues in textual communication, such as body language, facial expressions, and voice prosody. Specifically, facial pictographs facilitate emotional communication by encouraging the expression of emotional states and feelings.
3 Ways To Celebrate
- Explore the emojis.
- Forward these to those you love.
- Share on social media using the hashtag #WorldEmojiDay.
