Emoji (emoji, emoji) is not a by-product of the development of society. This is the style of the icons (emoticons). Today they have become an important part of the history and culture of the whole world. Emoji found their place in the heart of almost every Internet user.
Many do not know what it is, and those who know and encounter them constantly, consider that emoji is just another form of entertainment. In fact, this is not so.
What is it? What are they needed for? We will try to figure this out in this article.
Emoticon, emoji and sticker.
Find out what? This is not exactly the same thing. Emoticon expresses emotions using ordinary standard characters ( punctuation marks, for example, “: -”).
Emoji is a code (an ordinary standard character from Unicode) that is available on all platforms that support it, and is dialed and transmitted with only one specific code (for example, "\ xF0 \ x9F \ x98 \ x81").
A sticker is simply a picture transmitted by a file or link.
Emoji Definition
It is the language of emoticons and ideograms used in various web pages and electronic messages. This is a way to communicate using graphics - instead of ordinary words, combinations of pictures are used here. This language first appeared in Japan, and then spread throughout the world.
What does emoji mean? Some of its symbols have a rather specific meaning in the culture of Japan. Here is some of them:
- white flower (indicates a perfectly completed homework);
- bowing businessman;
- a group of symbols denoting a popular food: dango, ramen, sushi, etc.
There are also emoticons that arose on the initiative of Internet users, and unlike emoji, they are a means of transmitting emotions using existing typographic tools. Emoji mean faces.
History of occurrence
The very first emoji were created by Shigetaka Kurita in 1998-1999. He was a member of the group working at the time to create the i-mode platform for the Internet.
Then a set of emoji was created - these are 172 characters having dimensions of 12 × 12 pixels. They were part of the functions designed for messaging for i-mode, and were designed to facilitate and accelerate electronic communication.
Back in 1997, Nicolas Laufrani began experimenting with animated emoticons to create colorful icons that could match existing ASCII emoticons. The latter consisted only of simple punctuation marks. Thus, the first graphic emoticons that were included in the online dictionary were created by Laufrani. Moreover, they were divided into categories: “Emotions”, “Classic”, “Holidays”, “Planets”, “Food”, “Flags”, “Sports”, “Babies”, “Nationalities”, “Entertainment”, “Weather” , "Animals", "Professions" and many others. other
All these images in 1997 were registered with the Copyright Office (USA), and then in 1998 they were posted on the Internet as gif files. Thus, they became the first in the history of the world graphic emoticons, which began to be used in various technologies.
What are emoji for?
Today, emoji is another way to quickly communicate. Writing has one significant drawback compared with spoken language - the difficulty of conveying emotions. Indeed, when exchanging information in writing, the interlocutors do not see each other's facial expressions and gestures. In addition, an online writer needs to have fast typing skills.
Of course, there are talented people (for example, writers) who can express emotions clearly and correctly, but there are few of them, and even that is simply not enough time when communicating via chat and other instant messaging services. Therefore, it was necessary to come up with something that could facilitate such communication, simply by inserting a code or designation into the text, so that the result is an expression of emotion that reflects the state of the speaker.
It was precisely such a problem that at one time contributed to the emergence of Internet slang, although it did not help much in conveying emotions about the written text or its author. But this was not enough - a major breakthrough was needed.
The initial solution to this issue was emoticons. But at first their application was considered not a serious matter, but now it is permissible even in business correspondence (for example, a colon with a stick and a bracket). Moreover, in this case it will not even matter if these icons are not converted to an emoticon picture. Because everyone has long been accustomed to them, everyone understands what emotion these punctuation marks reproduce.
Features
Emoji is a smiley that makes it easier for people to communicate in social networks. networks and retelling of plots of famous works and films. When asked who needed this network, the creators of emoji.li (social network) answered that Twitter was also not needed for the first time by anyone.
It should be noted that emojis are actively involved in pop culture. These amazing Japanese emoticons even played an almost dominant role in the Katy Perry - Roar video (in one version).
As a result, emoji slowly spread around the world, because they are very useful, funny and cute.
Conclusion
Not all emotions can convey typed words. Emoji is a wonderful find. Probably, it is still impossible to argue that with their help you can fully correspond, but one thing is clear that it is also impossible to imagine communication without any emoji. For example, they can quite easily convey the excessive tragedy of sadness and contain self-irony. Emoji has proven that they are capable of much.