--- 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. title: Celebrate World Emoji Day With a Lesson in Emoji History image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt255d40c8be425875/69889c2c196cf431fd03c6b7/emoticons.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Newsfeed](/tag/time-section-newsfeed/) ## Newsfeed Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # How Emojis Have Completely Revolutionized Communication From Tears of Joy to Bacon  by [Raisa Bruner](/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jul 15, 2016 10:31 PM CUT  Getty Images  by [Raisa Bruner](/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jul 15, 2016 10:31 PM CUT 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/ "undefined"), 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/ "undefined"), 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 "undefined"), 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 "undefined"), 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 "undefined") has even written an emoji-only menu, and [an emoji movie](http://time.com/3967098/emoji-movie-sony-pictures-animation/?iid=sr-link3 "undefined") 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 "undefined") (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/ "undefined").  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/ "undefined") 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 "undefined") as each character becomes more customizable with more gender and skin tone diversity. So happy #WorldEmojiDay. This universal language has simplified (and made it easier to express emotion in) our digital communications. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4408803/how-emoji-have-completely-revolutionized-communication-from-tears-of-joy-to-bacon/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4408803/how-emoji-have-completely-revolutionized-communication-from-tears-of-joy-to-bacon/"},"headline":"How Emojis Have Completely Revolutionized Communication From Tears of Joy to Bacon","datePublished":"2016-07-15T22:31:35.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:46:36.626Z","description":"They're the little pictographs that could","url":"https://time.com/4408803/how-emoji-have-completely-revolutionized-communication-from-tears-of-joy-to-bacon/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Technology","viral","Culture"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt255d40c8be425875/69889c2c196cf431fd03c6b7/emoticons.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Raisa Bruner","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt255d40c8be425875/69889c2c196cf431fd03c6b7/emoticons.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"emoticon","caption":"","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4408803/how-emoji-have-completely-revolutionized-communication-from-tears-of-joy-to-bacon/","name":"How Emojis Have Completely Revolutionized Communication From Tears of Joy to Bacon"}}]}] ```