Drum – 15 August 2019

‘Withoutit,part

ofwhatprovides

a well-rounded,

communicative

messageis

missing’

LEASTUSED

MOSTCONTROVERSIAL

ubious distinc-

belongs to the

gunicon. In the

there’s been some

controversy over school

kidsfacing criminal

charges for sending

essages to each other

n icon.Some have been

andothers have received

pendedsentences.

In France a man was jailedfo

months after texting his ex-gi

handgun emoji because theju

the text the same as makinga

Unicode Consortium, aglob

non-profit organisation thats

standards for text in moderns

and decides on emoji, ruledth

should go. It has been replaced

a more innocuous and brightly

coloured water pistol.

is

i

a

U

c

reateningm

ththeg

pelle

Thatwouldbethe

ratherbizarresus-

pensionrailwayemoji.

Sowhyisiteventhere?

Becauseit’sbigin

Japan– andJapanwas

instrumentalinthehistoryofthesemodern-

dayhieroglyphics.

Infact,thereare 12 differentemojisfor

differenttypesoftrainsusedinthecountry,

includingthesuspensionrailway.

EMOJI

FACTS

Emojiswithfacesandheartsarethemostwidelyused, according to Brandwatch, a social

mediamonitoringagency.Thesearethetop 10 emojisusedonTwitter:

MOST ED

FACE WITH

TEARS OF JOY

LOUDLY

CRYING FACE

SMILING

FACE WITH

HEART-EYES

RED HEART

BACKHANDIN

RIGHT Thisem

to highlightlin

PURPLE HEART

Popular with

fans of Korean

supergroup BTS.

TWO HEARTS

SMILINGFACEWITH

SMILINGEYESP l

THINKING FACE

Often follows a

question, or can

express confusion.

FOLDED HANDS

A source of some

debate – are they

praying hands,

thanking hands, or

high-fivinghands?

Oftenusedto

h tit d

Jeremy Burge,whocallshimselfanemoji

historian and is the founder of reference

website Emojipedia, recently discovered

the little icons didn’t emerge in 1999 from

Japanese telecoms firm NTT Docomo, as

widely believed, but two years before that.

Softbank, a Tokyo-based conglomerate,

pioneered the first set of 90 emoji charac-

ters encoded into the text messages of the

phone itself, the Telegraph reports. “And the

early Japanese influence on emojis remains.”

Back in 1999, emoji (an amalgamation

of the Japanese word for pictures, “e”, and

letters, “moji”) were more practical than the

set of faces and emotions we use today.

“They were very practical,” he adds.

“The 1999 set had just five faces. But they

became so popular in Japan that if Western

technology companies wanted to get

involved in Japan, they had to add emoji

products.”

EMOJI ORIGINS

wwwww d m 151515 GGGG STSSTTT 2020120121

or three

rlfriendthe

dgedeemed

deaththreat.

al

etsthe

software

egun

dby

y

S

NDEXPOINTING

moji isoftenused

ks intweets.

SMILINGEYESPopular

whentalkingabout

goodtimesand

birthdays.

showgratitude,

accompaniedby

thewords“love”,

“good” and“family”.

GALLO IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES

NEWS