Subject: I think that's specifically horizontally-oriented character sequences.
Author:
Posted on: 2022-08-30 15:25:19 UTC

So ^_^ is kaomoji, but :-) is... not.

Wikipedia wants emoticon to mean any text faces, with kaomoji as a subset. It also uses smiley to mean non-kaomoji emoticons, because :). It then takes emoji to mean any which are actual pictures, and describes them as evolving from emoticons (while asserting that the similar words are just coincidence).

It drags in the Wingdings font as an early example of emojis, and mentions the use of them in MSN Messenger back in the early aughts - but states that the MSN "emoji" toolbar was by the Smiley Company, and referred to them as smileys!

The only thing that's clear is that the pictoral Unicode characters, and the various replacements for them on websites (Twitter and Facebook both replace them with their own custom art) are definitely emoji, and that the whole field is deeply confusing.

hS

(PS: Kinda want to create a future alphabet which has evolved from emoji in the same way as Egyptian deimotic evolved from hieroglyphics... only problem is I don't think emoji have yet become verbal, there being no agreement on which one is pronounced "lol".)

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