If you like to use emojis, you have some 3800 to choose from—and the organization that approves them is about to announce even more. But do we really need a purple splatter emoji? Or one that looks like Sasquatch? Plus: If you’re retired in the US...
Communicating by text often involves those colorful symbols called emoji, those cartoon-like images of everything from smiley faces to sushi. As of Summer 2025, there were some 3800 of them, and every few months, the Unicode Consortium adds even...
The word emoji doesn’t come from the English words emotion or emoticon. Instead, it is a combination of the Japanese words e for “picture” and moji “written character,” so the blend emoji literally means “pictogram.” In Japanese, the word...
For a deep dive into the world of emoji, check out Keith Houston’s new book, Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of the Emoji (Bookshop|Amazon). Emoji offer what’s called paralinguistic restitution, that is, restoring to written language...
It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when people disagreed over the best word to use when answering the phone. Alexander Graham Bell suggested answering with ahoy! but Thomas Edison was partial to hello! A fascinating new book about...
How do actors bring Shakespeare’s lines to life so that modern audiences immediately understand the text? One way is to emphasize the names of people and places at certain points. That technique is called billboarding. And: Anyone for an...