Emoticons or emojis have become a new form of  the internet alphabet. Emojis and  emoticons have injected themselves in all forms of written speech – emails, social media platforms, chatrooms would not be the same without these .

“Not only is the English language adding a new word every 98 minutes, but it is also expanding the basis of word creation. The alphabet, itself, is now expanding beyond letters to numbers + (emoticons) diacritical marks + emoji (picture words),” said Paul JJ Payack, chief word analyst, the Global Language Monitor.

the rise of emojis

Emoji is the top trending word of 2014, according to Global Language Monitor:

The Oxford English Dictionary added the word in 2014.  (As the New York Times says, this is an interesting fact in itself, because the word emoji is one that describes the new practice of not using words!!!)

The internet has given us all sorts of new and exciting ways to express ourselves – acronyms, symbols, abbreviations are part of this expressive aspect of internet language.  The emoji, also known as emoticons, which built on the popularity of smiley faces, are the symbols of choice when it comes to

According to an article in the New York Times, smiley faces were first used in the 1880’s.  In the 1990’s the Japanese added a feature of picture icons of faces to cellphone text functions. They were immediately taken up by teenagers worldwide. Since then emojis have caught on with the masses, and an emoji alphabet was created in 2008.  emojis now feature in all  computer operating systems.

There is even a blog, Emojinalysis, and a nonprofit group called the Unicode Consortium, which standardizes emojis across all platforms and add new emojis to the product.

Emoticons or emojis have become a new form of  the internet alphabet. Emojis and  emoticons have injected themselves in all forms of written speech – emails, social media platforms, chatrooms would not be the same without these .