From friendly smiley faces to cheeky peaches, emoji form a staple part of many of our daily messages.
Now, eight new emoji have been confirmed for version 16.0 of the Unicode Standard.
This includes a harp, a shovel, and a splatter – as well as a face with bags under its eyes.
While users will have to wait until next year to use them, the new emoji have already created quite a buzz on social media.
‘Representation is important. thank you unicode team,’ one user joked, in reference to the new face with bags under its eyes.
From friendly smiley faces to cheeky peaches, emoji form a staple part of many of our daily messages. Now, eight new emoji have been confirmed for version 16.0 of the Unicode Standard
One user took to X (formerly Twitter) to express their excitement at the new face, joking: ‘Finally, I feel so seen’
The latest emoji were confirmed by the Unicode Consortium and include a face with bags under its eyes, a fingerprint, a splatter, a root vegetable, a leafless tress, a harp, a shovel, and the flag for Sark – an island that is part of the English Channel.
‘Unicode Version 16.0 has been released!’ The Unicode Consortium tweeted.
‘Bringing the total number of characters to 154,998!’
The inclusion of the flag for Sark is a surprise because, as Unicode Consortium admits, it stopped the inclusion of any new flag emoji back in March 2022.
At the time, Emojipedia cited the ‘transient nature’ of many flags, and the ‘challenges including some identities while excluding others’.
Keith Broni, editor in chief of Emojipedia said: ‘This policy remains in force, though at the time of this policy’s announcement, Unicode did highlight how further national/regional flags could come into existence.’
‘Representation is important. thank you unicode team,’ one user joked, in reference to the new face with bags under its eyes
The new emoji will begin to appear over the next few months and throughout 2025. However, several users have already flocked to X (formerly Twitter) to express their excitement about the ‘face with bags under eyes’ emoji
Another excited user added: ‘the perfect response for every interaction on slack no matter what’
The new emoji will begin to appear over the next few months and throughout 2025.
However, several users have already flocked to X (formerly Twitter) to express their excitement about the ‘face with bags under eyes’ emoji.
‘Finally, I feel so seen,’ one user tweeted.
Another added: ‘the perfect response for every interaction on slack no matter what.’
And one joked: ‘Finally an emoji that reflects my permanent mood.’
ARE EMOJIS RUINING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE?
Emojis may be a fun form of communication but they are destroying the English language, a recent study by Google has revealed.
Smiley faces, love hearts, thumbs up and other cartoon icons – rather than words – are the preferred method of communication by teenagers, who are considered the worst offenders regarding the decline in grammar and punctuation.
More than a third of British adults believe emojis are the reason for the deterioration in proper language usage, according to the study commissioned by the Google-owned site YouTube.
Emojis were first used by Japanese mobile phone companies in the late 1990s to express an emotion, concept or message in a simple, graphic way. Now, Twitter feeds, text messages and Facebook posts are crammed with them
Of the two thousand adults, aged 16 to 65, who were asked their views, 94 per cent reckoned English was in a state of decline, with 80 per cent citing youngsters as the worst offenders.
The most common errors made by Brits are spelling mistakes (21 per cent), followed closely by apostrophe placement (16 per cent) and the misuse of a comma (16 per cent).
More than half of British adults are not confident with their command of spelling and grammar, the study also found.
Furthermore, around three-quarters of adults rely on emoji to communicate, in addition to a dependence on predictive text and spell checking.
The use of emojis has seeped into our culture to such an extent that the Oxford Dictionary’s ‘Word of the Year’ in 2015 wasn’t actually a word at all – it was the Face With Tears emoji, which shows just how influential the little graphic images have become.
They were first used by Japanese mobile phone companies in the late 1990s to express an emotion, concept or message in a simple, graphic way.
