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Emoji

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A sample of Emoji from Google's "Hangouts" in a previous version of the app


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Emoji ( , Japanese pronunciation: [emodi]) are the ideograms or smileys used in Japanese electronic
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messages and Web pages, that are spreading outside Japan. Originally meaning pictograph, the
word emoji literally means "picture" (e) + "character" (moji). The characters are used much
like ASCIIemoticons or kaomoji, but a wider range is provided, and the icons are standardized and
built into the handsets.
A large number of emoji exist in various genres, including facial expressions, common objects,
places and types of weather, and animals. They are similar to but more comprehensive than
previous dingbat fonts. The original designer of emoji, Shigetaka Kurita, took inspiration from
weather forecasts that used symbols to show weather, and from manga that used stock symbols to
express emotions, such as lightbulbs signifying inspiration. [1][2] Some emoji are very specific to
Japanese culture, such as a bowing businessman, a face wearing a face mask, a white flower used
to denote "brilliant homework",[3] or a group of emoji representing popular
foods: ramen noodles, dango, onigiri, Japanese curry, and sushi.
Emoji were initially used by Japanese mobile operators, NTT DoCoMo, au, and SoftBank
Mobile (formerly Vodafone). These companies each defined their own variants of emoji using
proprietary standards. From 2010 onwards, some emoji character sets have been incorporated
into Unicode, a standard system for indexing characters, which has allowed them to be used outside
Japan and to be standardised across different operating systems.
Emoji have become increasingly popular since their international inclusion in Apple's iPhone, which
was followed by similar adoption by Android and other mobile operating systems.[4][5][6] Apple's OS
X operating system supports emoji as of version 10.7 (Lion).[7] Microsoft added monochrome
Unicode emoji coverage to the Segoe UI Symbol system font in Windows 8 and added color emoji in
Windows 8.1 via the Segoe UI Emoji font.

The exact appearance of emoji is not prescribed but varies between fonts, in the same way that
normal typefaces can display letters differently. For example, the Apple Color Emoji typeface is
proprietary to Apple, and can only be used on Apple devices. Different computing companies have
developed their own fonts to display emoji, some of which have been open-sourced to permit their
reuse.[8][9] Both colour and monochrome emoji typefaces exist, as well as at least one animated
design.[10]
In the examples below, all emoji in body text and tables will be supplied by the default browser (and
probably system) emoji font, and may appear different on devices running different operating
systems. Separate pictures (such as that shown right) will appear the same for all viewers.
Contents
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1 History
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1.1 Early emoji encoding

1.2 In the Unicode standard

2 Blocks
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2.1 SoftBank Unicode Private Use Area encoding


3 Implementation

3.1 Android

3.2 Chrome

3.3 Linux

3.4 Microsoft Windows

3.5 OS X and iOS

3.6 English-language Wikipedia

3.7 General

4 Film adaptation

5 See also

6 References

7 External links

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