Emoji
Emoji
A small picture used alongside text to express feelings or situations.
In Simple Terms
Emoji are small pictures you use when sending messages on a smartphone or computer to quickly convey your feelings or objects. With a single symbol, they can express subtle nuances—like anger or joy—that are hard to convey through text alone. By mixing symbols like smiley faces or food into a message, you can instantly show the other person how you feel or what's going on.
Behind the Name
The word "emoji" comes from Japanese, combining "e" (picture) and "moji" (character). Although emoji began as a distinctly Japanese trend on mobile phones and other portable devices, they're now used worldwide under this same name.
Take a Closer Look!
Emoji are small pictures that you type in the same way as text when using a smartphone or computer, to express your feelings or objects.
Without using words, they let you instantly convey subtle human emotions—like anger, joy, or sadness—to the other person at a glance.
For example, a smiley face conveys happiness, while a food symbol makes it easy to show what you're eating.
Put simply, each emoji is registered within Unicode, a universal standard, as one or more numeric codes, and each code is assigned a meaning—like "this represents a smiling face." What actually gets sent and received in a message is this numeric data.
Simple emoji like a smiley face or an apple are represented by a single code, but others—like flags, skin tone variations, or family emoji—are made by combining multiple codes into a single image.
However, Unicode only defines these codes and their meanings; how each one is actually drawn as an image is left up to individual manufacturers and operating systems, like Apple or Google. That's why the exact shape or nuance of an emoji can look slightly different depending on the recipient's phone or app, even if you sent what you thought was the same emoji.
In this way, emoji serve as a tool for adding nuance that text alone can't fully express.
Being able to communicate easily with people around the world, across language barriers, is one of their biggest strengths.