He proposed using the smiley face 🙂 to indicate jokes and a sad face : -( to indicate seriousness, much like many of us still do today. It became apparent that he and his colleagues needed a way to convey when they were joking or being sarcastic on a text-only university online message board. The word is a portmanteau of emotion and icon.Įmoticons are credited to Scott Fahlman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, in 1982. An emoticon is “a digital icon or sequence of keyboard symbols that serve to represent a facial expression, such as 🙂 for a smiling face” or <3 for a heart. So, what’s an emoji user to do? 🤷🏽 When did we start using emoji?Įmoji were in part inspired by emoticons. When it comes to sending emails that are serious or professional in nature, some worry that using emoji makes them look childish. Not everyone is always on board with emoji, however. A few decades ago, if you told someone that people would soon be sending one another electronic messages full of cartoon smiley faces, they would have looked at you like, well, 🙃.īut, the future is now, and we do indeed send each other emails, texts, and tweets all day long that contain hearts and sparkles, crying faces and laughing faces, and all sorts of creatures, great 🦑 and small🐛.
