Emoji Quiz
A new emoji needs approval from a standards committee before it reaches your phone.
An emoji quiz with answers about the symbols themselves: where they started, how new ones are chosen, why there is a day in their honour and how a set of tiny pictures ended up in a museum.
Did you know?
- The emoji showing two hands pressed together is officially called Folded Hands. In Japan, where it was designed, the gesture means please or thank you. Many people elsewhere read it as praying, and a popular but mistaken story claims it shows two people sharing a high-five.
- In 2015 Finland became the first country to publish its own official set of national emoji. The collection, released by the foreign ministry, included a person in a sauna, a classic unbreakable mobile phone and a headbanging heavy-metal fan.
- A complete translation of the novel Moby-Dick into emoji was published in 2010 under the title Emoji Dick. Hundreds of online workers translated it one sentence at a time. In 2013 it became the first emoji book accepted into the collection of the United States Library of Congress.
How emoji conquered the keyboard
Emoji began as a practical fix. In the late 1990s Japanese mobile phones could show only short messages on tiny screens, and text alone often sounded colder than intended. A small set of pictures for weather, moods, food and transport let people add tone in a single character. The designer took ideas from weather forecasts, street signs and the symbols used in Japanese comics to show feelings. The idea was an instant success with teenagers.
From Japan to every phone
For a decade emoji stayed mostly in Japan, and each phone company had its own incompatible set. That changed in 2010, when several hundred of them were added to the international standard for text, giving each one a code that any device could read. Apple made an emoji keyboard available worldwide in 2011 and other makers followed. Within a few years the symbols were part of everyday writing almost everywhere.
How a new emoji is born
Adding a symbol takes about two years. A proposal must argue that the image will be used widely, that it is not just a passing trend and that it cannot already be expressed with existing emoji. Logos, living people and deities are not accepted. Once a symbol is approved, each company draws its own version, which is why the same emoji looks slightly different from one phone to another.
One picture, many readings
Because the drawings differ between devices, and because cultures read gestures differently, the same emoji can be understood in several ways. Researchers have found that people often disagree about whether a particular face is happy or uneasy. Courts in several countries have even had to decide what an emoji meant in a message, treating the little pictures as seriously as words. The safest rule is the oldest one in writing: if a message matters, add words.