What is an emoticon?

An emoticon is short for ’emotion icon’ and is a visual representation of a facial expression or body posture to convey mood, attitude or emotion used initially in e-mail and text messages. The most well known is the smiley face. Emoticons can at their most simplest be expressed within text by using a series of punctuation marks (as above) and sometimes letters and special marks.

Where are they used?

The emoticon has become increasingly popular within texting and social media conversations. Communication via texting, social media, email and other online channels differs to the way we communicate face to face for a number of reasons. One aspect is that computer mediated communication can lack the visual and auditory cues we experience face to face. It can become harder to convey or interpret emotions where communication is just text.

The Emoji

Emoji are picture characters most frequently associated with mobile phone usage in Japan, but now used across the world. The word emoji comes from the Japanese (e = picture) (mo = writing) (ji = character). Below we will look at how both the emoticon and emojis are becoming more common place as options within the mobile phone, blogging dashboards and other social media spaces.

Emoticon and emoji use in Social Media

Over the years the process of using emoticons within text, email and social media has been made easier, allowing the user to simply copy and paste in an emoji, or use the shortcode which then auto converts into a graphic. This takes the emoticon to a new level as the choice available includes such a wide variety of choice. Where the emoticon may express emotions, the emoji also offers objects.

End

9 different faces are combined together, implying different people and things in society.

Create 255 NFTs to Commemorate the Birth of the Emoji.