--- 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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Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically.  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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