We are daily using the emoticons and emoji in our online platforms while chatting with our buddies. Most of the people love to use them. They are usually helpful in creating a cheerful atmosphere and healing emotions of people and make them relieved. Is there any difference between these two? And also have you ever thought of the history of these emoticons and emoji???
The word emoji is derived from the Japanese words 'e'(picture) and 'moji' (character). Emoji found some technical difficulties to be used in several platforms until 2010. But later all those technical problems were solved and now most of our smartphones and other chat aiding gadgets are filled with hundreds and hundreds of emoji.
Is there any difference between Emoticons and Emoji?
Emoticons are the typographical representation of human emotions. They are represented by using punctuation marks, numbers, and letters. The word 'emoticon' is derived from the words "emotion-icon". That is, they are the iconic models of human emotions. The first digital smiley emoticon is formulated by a computer scientist, Scott Elliot Fahlman on September 19, 1982. He is documented as the first person to use the emoticons :-) and :-(. Before that, in 1881, typesetting emoticons were published by the U.S. magazine, Puck.
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| Fig 2. Emoticons published by the magazine, Puck |
Technology advancements made the replacement of these emoticons with emoji. Emoji are nothing but the actual and colourful pictorial representations of emoticons. These are developed by the Japanese Communications firm, NTT DoCoMo in the late 1990s.
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| Fig 3. Emoji v/s Emoticons |
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| Fig 4. Some commonly used emoji |
The addition of these non-verbal elements in the messages provides a face to face like an interaction with one another. They help in expressing the human emotions quickly and effectively.
