Today is World Emoji Day. 10 things you didn’t know about emoji:
Why today? Because the calendar emoji displays the date 17 July. Which itself is a nod to the launch of iCal on 17 July 2002.
Emoji is a Japanese word which means “picture character”. The plural is emoji, not emojis.
Some argue that Egyptian hieroglyphics were the first emoji. However, the first set of emoji as we know them today was created by Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita in 1999, and included symbols for traffic, time and the weather.
The word emoji was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2913, defined as “a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion.”
The most used emoji is ‘Face With Tears of Joy’, which was top of the emoji usage chart for several years in a row, and was even the Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year in 2015. The Birthday cake and Pizza emoji are the most commonly used food emoji.
In March 2019 there were 3,019 official emoji but more are being added all the time. The Unicode Consortium approves new additions to the emoji library each year. Should you think there is a glaring hole in the emoji library and have an idea for a new one, you can submit a request for free, ideally with a detailed report stating why you think your new emoji should be in there. It can take two years to be approved.
People are writing books made up entirely of emoji. The first of these was entitled Emoji Dick, which isn’t as rude as you might think at first. It’s a translation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick into emoji and is 736 pages long.
Men and women use them differently. Women are 11% more likely to use emoji representing joy and men are 35% more likely to use emoji representing fear.
Researchers have found that when a person sees an emoji, it activates the same parts of the brain as when seeing human facial expressions.
They could be a way forward as an alternative means of communication for people on the Autism Spectrum, or to help children who have been victims of abuse describe their emotions, researchers say.
The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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