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Emojis aren’t text, though. Nobody “writes” emoji outside of the digital world so I don’t think emoji could accurately be called “text” or part of a “writing sy
by wwalexander 4y ago
Emojis aren’t text, though. Nobody “writes” emoji outside of the digital world so I don’t think emoji could accurately be called “text” or part of a “writing system:
> Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,[note 1][note 2] is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems
People write smiley faces, but there was already a code point for basic smileys.
I think standardized emoticons are a good thing, but I don’t think the Unicode spec is where they best belong.
- tobr 4y agoI don’t see anything in the quoted passage that limits it to non-digital writing systems.
- Nevermark 4y agoGiven that emoji are most typically used in text, having it all together seems better than two bodies coming up with incompatible solutions to emoji and the glyph issues of various languages. In the end emoji is a language, a visual icon language.
- WorldMaker 4y agoWhere would they belong if not Unicode? Emoticons are a "writing system" (whether or not you believe them to be more "text" or "meta-text") that needs encoding, and one that was encoded in standards that predated Unicode. (They were at first added for compatibility with CJK systems that had already been using them for some time. They've been greatly expanded since those original encodings that Unicode "inherited" from other text encodings, but they started as text encodings in other standards.) Personally, I think Unicode actually did the world a favor by taking ownership of emoji and standardizing them. There's nothing "weird" that emoji do that doesn't exist somewhere else in some other language's text encodings. Things like ZWJ sequences for complex graphemes existed in a number of languages that Unicode encoded well before emoji. Emoji being common and popular helps break certain Western-centric assumptions that language encodings are "simple" and 1-to-1 code point to grapheme, assumptions that had been needed to break for many years before emoji gave Unicode users a tool to test that even "Western developers" needed to respect if they wanted happy users. Better emoji support is better Unicode support across the lovely and incredible diversity of what Unicode encodes.
- WorldMaker 4y agoAside: Also, given the current, common vernacular usages of the eggplant and peach emoji alone, I find it difficult in 2023 to argue that emoji aren't text and aren't being used as a language inside text for and of text.
- wwalexander 4y agoYou make some good points! Thanks for your insight :)
- baq 4y agoWhat’s the difference between kanji and emoji? Tradition? Most text is now created digitally, so no wonder you have reflexivity here. You might think that it’s tail wagging the dog, but in truth the dog and the tail switched places. People want to write emoji, so it becomes Unicode.
- yamtaddle 4y agoSmiley faces and hearts and all kinds of stuff appear in hand-written text.