You Are My World In Emojis

:raising_hand: :blush: :thumbsup: :pencil: :thumbsup: :video_camera: . :peach: :raising_hand: :pensive: :thumbsdown: :pencil: :smiley: .

I pride myself on being good at expressing myself in words and even video. But I'grand aback of how bad I am at writing in emoji.

:eyeglasses: :rice_scene: :rice_scene: :rice_scene: :confused: :rocket: :microscope: . :point_right: :eyeglasses: :newspaper: :sob: :question:

Trying to decipher all these tiny pictures feels like rocket scientific discipline. Have you lot understood any of this commodity so far, or is it but frustrating?

:crystal_ball: :loudspeaker: :question: :phone: :arrow_right: :fax: :arrow_right: :e-mail: :arrow_right: :iphone: :arrow_right: :smiley: :question: :smile_cat: :kissing_cat: :scream_cat: :joy_cat: :smiley_cat: :heart_eyes_cat: :smirk_cat: :crying_cat_face: :pouting_cat: :question: :exclamation: :dancer: :dancer: :dancer: :dancer: :question:

Is this actually the future of digital communications? Nine variations of a cat face?! Salsa dancing ladies?

:peach: :bust_in_silhouette: :raising_hand: :heart: :page_facing_up: :thumbsup: :thumbsdown: :smiley: :manus: . :couple: :family: :two_women_holding_hands: :two_men_holding_hands: :pencil: :smiley: :chart_with_upwards_trend: , :art: :smiley: :chart_with_upwards_trend: :iphone: :computer: .

Only whether we word lovers like information technology or not, emojis are here to stay. Their popularity has skyrocketed, and the emoji palette has been growing on smartphones and computers.

:raising_hand: :seedling: ...

So I decided to...

Oh, I surrender! Requite me words! Existent words! They're so much easier. :peach: as much as I want to :running: from these cartoons, I :no_entry: .They are rapidly seeping into the vernacular of the :globe_with_meridians: . It's a :anchor: or :swimmer: situation.

I get :email: at present with little characters in the bailiwick line. My text messages and social media feeds are increasingly full of :smiley: -only sentences or thoughts. Instagram, specifically, says about :four: :zero: % of the text posts on its apps contain emojis. Domino's even lets you guild a pie now via tweet with just a :pizza: .

What if emoji weren't merely for text messages and tweets? WSJ'south Joanna Stern brings the wildly popular pictograms into the real world and provides some tips on how to learn the crazy new language. Photo/video: Drew Evans/The Wall Street Journal.

Emoji is the new lingua franca. And like learning any new language, brain ability, practice and tricks are required—especially for an idiom that has :poop: and :ghost: but no equal sign.

Unfortunately, there is no :rose: :gem: for emoji yet, so this week I took it upon myself to create my ain :smiley: :school: and go a better emoji-unicator.

Understand the Language

My first :signal_strength: was understanding that :smiley: is unlike any other language out there. Yes, a pocket-sized character can be a substitute for a word, or many words—similar to Chinese. Simply taken together, the language lacks the grammar, vocabulary, syntax and semantics of a true linguistic communication.

The result tin can be complete and utter ambiguity, which is why most are dislocated by a string of characters sewn together. Take, for instance, this coupling: :car: :business firm: .

"And then… a machine and a house. Piece of cake!" Aye, that'south obviously the literal translation. Just it could likewise mean "I am going home." Or it could mean "I left the automobile at home." Or it could even mean a "car's house," aka "garage"—since there isn't a dedicated graphic symbol for that.

Emoji Lingo Cheat Sheet

:running: :clock330:	Running tardily
:thumbsup: :four_leaf_clover:	Practiced luck
:honeybee: :speak_no_evil:	Be quiet
:point_right: :traffic_light: :girl:	You lot go girl
:eyes: :point_right: :soon:	See you lot shortly
:tada: :alarm_clock:	Party time
:telephone_receiver: :point_up:	Phone call me
:no_good: :tea:	Non my loving cup of tea
:nut_and_bolt: :point_right:	Spiral you
:monkey: :moneybag:	Monkey business
:smoking: :fire:	Smoking hot
:bomb: :shell:	Flop shell
:moyai: :star:	Stone star
:performing_arts: :princess:	Drama queen
:toilet: :page_facing_up:	Toilet paper

Sources: Keymoji, Emojisaurus and others.

But emojis have a "useful ambivalence," says Mark Davis, the president and co-founder of Unicode, the group charged with defining the characters for all :iphone: :reckoner: ​—including emoji ​characters. He believes they are best used as an "adjunct" to text—especially in social media—helping to ​make upwardly for the the lack of gestures, ​facial ​expressions and ​intonation ​found in speech​.​​

" :smiley: :sunglasses: :musculus: :dancer: :iphone: :hourglass: :straight_ruler: :link: :book: :heavy_plus_sign: :stew: :yum: :large_blue_circle: :sunflower: :joy: ," Dr. Davis said.

"Emojis are strongest in social media: in quick, short messages where they connect with the reader and add together flavor, color and emotion."

He thought I was a bit :chestnut: :anecdote: :chestnut: for even attempting to write the first part of this article strictly in :smiley: .

Merely even to just supplement text with emoji, you need to arrange your brain to think visually: how to communicate in cartoon.

For me, that meant replacing sure quick responses and feelings with some basic characters. A :thumbsup: is an piece of cake way to say "Sounds practiced!" I can convey my bad mood about having to work on Lord's day with just a :rage: or my excitement for my sis'due south landing a new chore with not one :heart_eyes: just :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: .

When I started to comprehend that, I felt in some peculiar way that my text messages had more emotion. In switching from :telephone: and :couple: communications to primarily :page_facing_up: , we have lost out on the feelings that can merely be conveyed in inflection and :chroma: :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: :joy: :persevere: :sob: :disappointed_relieved: :weary: :open_mouth: .

Learn the Vocabulary

Getting a handle on just how and when I should start using emojis instead of words was the easy role, figuring out how to actually :mag_right: the emojis to help me express myself was much harder.

The best :speech_balloon: I got came from Jonas Downey, a self-proclaimed proficient emoji communicator and co-creator of Emojisaurus.com, a website that provides emoji translations of popular phrases.

" :open_mouth: :ane: :zero: :zero: :question: :grimacing: :bulb: :pencil: :100: ," Mr. Downey told me. "Making emoji phrases is similar writing sentences in English—you become better when you know the whole vocabulary."

So I took his :speech_balloon: : I sat down with the iOS emoji keyboard, and got to :books: . Why hadn't I been using :muscle: to tell people I was at the gym? Or :point_right: :wine_glass: to enquire people out for drinks? Or :toilet: to say, well, you know?

The trouble is that the characters that would best express ourselves aren't ever there. One reason is that emoji comes from :jp: . (In Japanese, emoji means "film grapheme.") By my count, :five: % of the about :nine: :zero: :zero: emojis available to :iphone: users aren't going to exist useful to many people in the U.S., like :izakaya_lantern: and :beginner: .

That also means many potentially useful characters are missing. While there are :hatched_chick: :hatching_chick: :chicken: :baby_chick: :rooster: , there is still no single emoji for :fire: :dog: .

We are now starting to run into an expansion of the emoji language, including some very American characters. Microsoft has just added :middle_finger: to its keyboard in Windows x. (Information technology isn't available for Android or iOS). And both Microsoft and Apple now support :star_trek: . (Y'all know, "Alive long and prosper.") In the years to come, we can expect more and more than :u.s.: :smiley: .

Lean on Apps

With a better understanding of the new vocabulary at my :point_up: , I was prepare to put information technology into use. Only this is where our :iphone: are failing us.

The :smiley: keyboards on iPhone or Android :iphone: are utterly disorganized and unfamiliar. Yeah, they will automatically add your most used :smiley: to one pane, simply fifty-fifty if you get the hang of where some are located, you're stuck swiping through pages of little cartoons.

The recent iOS viii.3 update improves this, but I nonetheless like :two: keyboards from the App Store ameliorate. The :moneybag: :one: Emoji++ app allows y'all to just scroll vertically through the repository. Unfortunately, correct now, it does not support iOS'southward new multiracial option, which lets users change :baby_yellow: :baby_pale: :baby_cream: :baby_moderate_brown: :baby_dark_brown: :baby_black: , even :father_christmas: . David Smith, the creator of the app, plans to add together support for it into the app next month.

The different faces of emoji

Woman with bunny ears

Android

Apple

Microsoft

Confront screaming in fear

Android

Apple tree

Microsoft

I too fell in :heart: with Keymoji. Although information technology also doesn't take the multiracial choice, it suggests emoji equally yous blazon in regular text, right on top of the keyboard. And it doesn't just suggest regular emojis. For instance, when I typed "long fourth dimension no meet" information technology suggested :straight_ruler: :alarm_clock: :see_no_evil: . Some emoji elitists may say this sort of affair is cheating, merely I won't tell anyone!

Some Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy S6 handle emoji system meliorate than Apple tree. In each category of organisation—People, Nature, Objects—y'all tin can simply vertically roll to see the options, no annoying horizontal swiping through pages of screens. I also :middle: Samsung's newest emoji keyboard, which forgoes Android's default besides-cartoony styling to wait more than like this :samsung_emoji: .

Notwithstanding, on a whole, Android users lack quality emoji characters and apps. The best I found for my needs was SwiftKey (likewise available on iOS). The popular keyboard app auto-suggests some emojis as you type, for instance :pizza: , :fries: , :doughnut: , merely it isn't equally advanced as Keymoji. And none can make up for the fact that Google nonetheless hasn't brought different pare tones to Android and its human emojis, :android_girl: :android_boy: , look like the Minions from "Despicable Me."

This :heavy_plus_sign: another layer of confusion to communicating in emoji. Because the software platform creators control the visual representation, an emoji sent by an iPhone user to an Android telephone user will :eyes: different—in some cases, actually dissimilar. Have my beloved :dancer: . Ruby dress. Keen moves. She can be used for many expressions from "social" to "political party." On Android, information technology's :android_dancer: . Yes, a yellowish blob with a rose in its mouth. Transport that to someone, and the :rose: :gun: .

A few Android apps promise to ease the pain and interpret Android emoji to iOS. The best one I found was Sliding Emoji Keyboard iOS, though it is slightly less convenient to switch to a dedicated emoji keyboard in Android than in iOS.

That brings united states to my nigh important emoji learning of all:

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :thumbsup: :smiley: :heavy_exclamation_mark: :altogether: :sushi: :baseball: :thumbsup: :smiley: :heavy_exclamation_mark: :revolving_hearts: :heartpulse: :sparkling_heart: :thumbsup: :smiley: :heavy_exclamation_mark:

Playful chitchat, literal conversation and sentiment all benefit from these piddling characters.

:peach: :neutral_face: :speech_balloon: :arrow_right: :e-postal service: :scorpius: :soccer: :umbrella: :round_pushpin: :free: .

Just serious advice should stay emoji free.

Write to Joanna Stern at joanna.stern@wsj.com

Note: Apple emoji alphabet used except where noted. Additional characters from Emojipedia.

Source: http://graphics.wsj.com/how-i-learned-to-love-writing-with-emojis/

Share this post