--- title: Emoji: History of Communicating in Era of Emoji description: July 17 is "World Emoji Day," so let's take a look back on the rise of the universal pictographic language — and consider what's next. canonical: https://time.com/4408803/how-emoji-have-completely-revolutionized-communication-from-tears-of-joy-to-bacon/ author: Raisa Bruner article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-07-15T22:31:35.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:46:36.626Z og:title: Celebrate World Emoji Day With a Lesson in Emoji History og:description: Let's take a look at the little pictograph that could og:url: https://time.com/4408803/how-emoji-have-completely-revolutionized-communication-from-tears-of-joy-to-bacon/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt255d40c8be425875/69889c2c196cf431fd03c6b7/emoticons.jpg?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 600 og:image:height: 338 og:image:alt: emoticon og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Celebrate World Emoji Day With a Lesson in Emoji History twitter:description: Let's take a look at the little pictograph that could twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt255d40c8be425875/69889c2c196cf431fd03c6b7/emoticons.jpg?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Emojis Have Completely Revolutionized Communication From Tears of Joy to Bacon > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement.  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Jul 15, 2016 10:31 PM UTC  Getty Images  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Jul 15, 2016 10:31 PM UTC Sunday, July 17 is World Emoji Day. So of course it would make sense to celebrate the universal language of our generation. They first [appeared in 2011](http://9to5mac.com/2011/06/08/standard-emoji-keyboard-arrives-to-ios-5-heres-how-to-enable-it/), but before emoji, if you’ll recall, we tended to use simple keyboard commands to transmit emotion via text: the colon and the closed parenthesis, for instance, was the standard smile. [With today’s emoji](http://www.unicode.org/emoji/), we have 23 different smiley faces that all feature an upturned mouth — and that’s not including the various animals, aliens, ghosts, and human-like depictions of positive emotion that are also found on the special keyboard. Today, we can count 1,851 official symbols recognized (and distributed universally) by [the Unicode Consortium](http://time.com/4244795/emoji-consortium-mark-davis/?iid=sr-link2), a technical body that reviews and approves the pictographic language. Of course, that’s not to mention the countless emoji apps that have been developed as separate keyboards: from Bitmoji to [KIMOJI, Justin Bieber’s Justmoji, and StephMoji](http://time.com/4355578/steph-curry-justin-bieber-kim-kardashian-emoji/?iid=sr-link2), there are pretty much infinite ways to express oneself without words these days. A [restaurant in London](http://time.com/4407111/emoji-restaurant-london-little-yellow-door/?iid=sr-link1) has even written an emoji-only menu, and [an emoji movie](http://time.com/3967098/emoji-movie-sony-pictures-animation/?iid=sr-link3) is in the works. To top it off, the Oxford Dictionary anointed an emoji as its [2015 Word of the Year](http://time.com/4114886/oxford-word-of-the-year-2015-emoji/?iid=sr-link4) (the “Face with Tears of Joy”). They calculated that this single icon made up 20 percent of U.S. and U.K. emoji use, followed by the kissy-face emoji, which accounted for 9 percent in the U.S., according to their research. “Emoji have come to embody a core aspect of living in a digital world that is visually driven, emotionally expressive, and obsessively immediate,” the Oxford Dictionary said in a statement. Emoji are also popular on Twitter, where the most-used face emojis include the “Face with Tears of Joy” as well as the heart-eyes and crying face. Hearts — of the red and pink variety — are also popular. According to Twitter, the most-used emoji for the month of July is the [grimacing face](http://emojipedia.org/grimacing-face/).  Twitter We’ve come a long way from the initial roll-out of emoji, too. The Japanese telecommunications planner [Shigetaka Kurita](http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2014/03/26/meet-shigetaka-kurita-the-father-of-emoji/) is widely considered the inventor of the pictographs in 1999\. The first set of simplistic emoji were also limited to traditional gender stereotypes and a single skin color (yellow), although [now that’s all changing](http://time.com/4407931/emojis-will-have-exciting-new-roles-for-women/?iid=sr-link1) as each character becomes more customizable with more gender and skin tone diversity. So happy #WorldEmojiDay. 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