I Always Ask Myself if You Are Going to Say Hello Again in Emojis

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

I pride myself on beingness good at expressing myself in words and even video. Simply I'm ashamed 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 similar rocket scientific discipline. Take you lot understood any of this article so far, or is it just 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 really the future of digital communications? Nine variations of a cat face?! Salsa dancing ladies?

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

But whether nosotros word lovers like it or non, emojis are hither to stay. Their popularity has skyrocketed, and the emoji palette has been growing on smartphones and computers.

:raising_hand: :bulb: ...

So I decided to...

Oh, I give up! Requite me words! Real words! They're so much easier. :peach: equally much as I desire to :running: from these cartoons, I :no_entry: .They are chop-chop seeping into the colloquial of the :globe_with_meridians: . It'south a :anchor: or :swimmer: situation.

I get :e-postal service: now with piffling characters in the subject field line. My text messages and social media feeds are increasingly total of :smiley: -simply sentences or thoughts. Instagram, specifically, says nearly :four: :null: % of the text posts on its apps contain emojis. Domino'southward even lets you gild a pie now via tweet with but a :pizza: .

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

Emoji is the new lingua franca. And like learning any new linguistic communication, brain power, exercise and tricks are required—particularly for an idiom that has :poop: and :ghost: but no equal sign.

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

Understand the Language

My kickoff :signal_strength: was understanding that :smiley: is unlike any other language out there. Yes, a small-scale character can be a substitute for a give-and-take, or many words—similar to Chinese. But taken together, the language lacks the grammar, vocabulary, syntax and semantics of a true language.

The result tin can be complete and utter ambivalence, which is why about are confused past a string of characters sewn together. Have, for instance, this coupling: :machine: :house: .

"And so… a automobile and a house. Piece of cake!" Aye, that'southward plain the literal translation. But it could also mean "I am going home." Or it could mean "I left the automobile at home." Or it could even hateful a "motorcar'due south house," aka "garage"—since there isn't a dedicated grapheme for that.

Emoji Lingo Cheat Sheet

:running: :clock330:	Running late
:thumbsup: :four_leaf_clover:	Good luck
:honeybee: :speak_no_evil:	Be quiet
:point_right: :traffic_light: :girl:	You go girl
:eyes: :point_right: :soon:	See y'all before long
:tada: :alarm_clock:	Party time
:telephone_receiver: :point_up:	Call me
:no_good: :tea:	Non my cup of tea
:nut_and_bolt: :point_right:	Screw yous
:monkey: :moneybag:	Monkey business organisation
:smoking: :fire:	Smoking hot
:bomb: :beat out:	Bomb shell
:moyai: :star:	Stone star
:performing_arts: :princess:	Drama queen
:toilet: :page_facing_up:	Toilet newspaper

Sources: Keymoji, Emojisaurus and others.

Just emojis have a "useful ambiguity," says Mark Davis, the president and co-founder of Unicode, the group charged with defining the characters for all :iphone: :computer: ​—including emoji ​characters. He believes they are best used equally an "adjunct" to text—particularly in social media—helping to ​make up 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 fleck :anecdote: :chestnut: :anecdote: for even attempting to write the outset part of this article strictly in :smiley: .

Simply even to just supplement text with emoji, you need to adjust 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 like shooting fish in a barrel way to say "Sounds expert!" I tin convey my bad mood virtually having to work on Sunday with just a :rage: or my excitement for my sis's landing a new job with not i :heart_eyes: but :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: .

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

Larn the Vocabulary

Getting a handle on just how and when I should start using emojis instead of words was the easy function, figuring out how to really :mag_right: the emojis to assistance me limited myself was much harder.

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

" :open_mouth: :i: :zip: :zero: :question: :grimacing: :bulb: :pencil: :100: ," Mr. Downey told me. "Making emoji phrases is like writing sentences in English language—you lot go amend when you know the whole vocabulary."

Then I took his :speech_balloon: : I sat downwardly 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 ask people out for drinks? Or :toilet: to say, well, you lot know?

The trouble is that the characters that would all-time express ourselves aren't e'er there. One reason is that emoji comes from :jp: . (In Japanese, emoji ways "picture grapheme.") Past my count, :five: % of the nearly :9: :zero: :zilch: emojis available to :iphone: users aren't going to be useful to many people in the U.S., like :izakaya_lantern: and :beginner: .

That too ways many potentially useful characters are missing. While there are :hatched_chick: :hatching_chick: :chicken: :baby_chick: :rooster: , at that place is nevertheless no single emoji for :fire: :domestic dog: .

We are now starting to see an expansion of the emoji language, including some very American characters. Microsoft has just added :middle_finger: to its keyboard in Windows 10. (It isn't available for Android or iOS). And both Microsoft and Apple tree now back up :star_trek: . (Y'all know, "Live long and prosper.") In the years to come, we tin can expect more and more :us: :smiley: .

Lean on Apps

With a ameliorate understanding of the new vocabulary at my :point_up: , I was ready to put it into utilise. But this is where our :iphone: are failing the states.

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

The contempo iOS 8.three update improves this, merely I all the same like :two: keyboards from the App Shop better. The :moneybag: :ane: Emoji++ app allows you to simply scroll vertically through the repository. Unfortunately, right 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 support for it into the app next month.

The different faces of emoji

Woman with bunny ears

Android

Apple

Microsoft

Face screaming in fear

Android

Apple

Microsoft

I besides fell in :heart: with Keymoji. Although it likewise doesn't take the multiracial option, it suggests emoji as yous type in regular text, right on top of the keyboard. And it doesn't just propose regular emojis. For case, when I typed "long time no run across" it suggested :straight_ruler: :alarm_clock: :see_no_evil: . Some emoji elitists may say this sort of affair is cheating, but I won't tell anyone!

Some Android phones similar the Samsung Galaxy S6 handle emoji organization better than Apple tree. In each category of organization—People, Nature, Objects—you tin can simply vertically curlicue to see the options, no annoying horizontal swiping through pages of screens. I also :heart: Samsung's newest emoji keyboard, which forgoes Android's default likewise-cartoony styling to look more 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 (too bachelor on iOS). The popular keyboard app auto-suggests some emojis as you type, for instance :pizza: , :fries: , :doughnut: , but information technology isn't as avant-garde as Keymoji. And none can make up for the fact that Google still hasn't brought dissimilar skin tones to Android and its man emojis, :android_girl: :android_boy: , look like the Minions from "Despicable Me."

This :heavy_plus_sign: some other layer of confusion to communicating in emoji. Considering the software platform creators control the visual representation, an emoji sent by an iPhone user to an Android phone user will :eyes: unlike—in some cases, really different. Accept my beloved :dancer: . Cherry-red wearing apparel. Great moves. She can exist used for many expressions from "social" to "party." On Android, it's :android_dancer: . Yes, a yellow blob with a rose in its oral cavity. Ship that to someone, and the :rose: :gun: .

A few Android apps promise to ease the pain and translate 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 us to my well-nigh important emoji learning of all:

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

Playful chitchat, literal conversation and sentiment all do good from these little characters.

:peach: :neutral_face: :speech_balloon: :arrow_right: :e-mail: :scorpius: :soccer: :umbrella: :round_pushpin: :costless: .

But serious advice should stay emoji costless.

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

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

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

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