EMOJIS have well and truly taken over the world, so why not celebrate the handy little icons on World Emoji Day (July 17).
WHAT IS AN EMOJI?
An emoji is a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion. The word emoji is based on two Japanese words put together: e (picture) and moji (letter or character).
There are more than 3000 different emojis and most of us use them many times every day.
WHO INVENTED EMOJIS?
The first ever emojis were designed in 1997. There were 90 emojis in this set, but they were only available on one type of expensive Japanese mobile phone that not many people used.
Some of these early emojis, such as Pile of Poo (💩), were added to later emoji sets.
The first set of widely-used emojis was created by Shigetaka Kurita in 1999 as part of a team working on a mobile internet platform in Japan.
He made 180 emojis inspired by expressions he saw on people’s faces, the symbols used for weather forecasts, Chinese characters, traffic signs and symbols used in a style of Japanese comics called manga.
Most popular emojis:
1) Face with tears of joy (😂)
2) Red heart (❤)
3) Loudly crying face (😭)
4) Smiling face with smiling eyes (😊)
5) Fire (🔥)
World Emoji Day was started in 2014 by Jeremy Burge, the founder of the emoji reference website Emojipedia. He chose July 17 because this is the date displayed on calender Emoji on the Apple keyboard.
New emojis are invented every year and added to emoji keyboards.
Face with Tears of Joy (😂) was one of the most popular emojis in the past five years. In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries named it Word of the Year.
Emojipedia defines Face with Tears of Joy (😂) as: “A yellow face with a big grin, uplifted eyebrows, and smiling eyes, each shedding a tear from laughing so hard. Widely used to show something is funny or pleasing.”
Today the world seems incomplete without emojis, they are our power to express…. Wishing a very Happy World Emoji Day!
