Emoji in text messages: yes or no?

There are some unwritten texting rules. Usually the use of emojis or emoticons in text messages is accepted, however, not everyone likes these icons and symbols. Some people love them, others hate them. What about you? Join our poll and debate and find out if they are as popular as they seem.

Emoji in text messages

Emoji comes from Japanese e (絵, "picture") + moji (文字, "character"). Emojis are also known in the West as "emotions" and "emoticons." Although some people argue that these concepts are different most people use them interchangeably. These ideograms and smileys are widely used and found extremely effective to convey moods and psychological states very quickly. The emoji icons are becoming increasingly sophisticated and messaging apps such as Whatsapp and Telegram offer you a wide variety of them. However many people find them extremely annoying and infantile. Critics say communication is suffering with the use of emoticons while others claim they help contextualize messages and intentions. Whether you love or hate them depends on what you expect from written language and what allowances you grant to our sped-up, fast-talking digital lives.

Pros and cons of emoji

If you are thinking of using emojis in your text messages you may want to consider first their pros and cons. 

Some of the advantages of using emoticons are:

• Emoji enable you to give your message a precise tone. Sometimes plain text can be seen as cold or even arrogant. Adding an emoticon can better convey the feeling you want to express: sympathy, happiness, humor, preoccupation, etc.
• Emoji are fun. You can create your own emoji text messages, and some people are really good at using their imagination to include emoticons in their stories.
• If you don’t speak very well a language, you can use emoticons to make yourself understand. Some emoji are universal.
• The main services regularly add new emoji. Facebook recently added icons you can pick while liking a publication. WhatsApp adds new emoticons in almost every software uptdate.

But using text messaging symbols has also some cons:

• Many emoji are unclear, and different persons can have different interpretations of the meaning of a particular emoticon. This can lead to some misunderstandings.
• Using too many icons for texting can be seen as childish behavior. Some people value proper sentences and good grammar, especially if the conversation is about something important.
• If you write only with emoji, you will not be able to express ideas with the same precision as with words, even if there are more and more emoticons available.
• Using emoji might also be just a trend and we may be quickly tired of it, the same as with so many trends before. Only time will tell.

List of emoji

Here are a few emoticons. No doubt that you might have used one of them at least once, even if the format may have been slightly different (depending on the service you were using):

😀 😬 😁 😂 😃 😄 😅 😆 😇 😉 😊 ☺️ 😋 😌 😍 😘 😗 😙 😚 😜 😝 😛 😎 😏 😶 😐 😑 😒 😳 😞 😟 😠 😡 😔 😕 ☹️ 😣 😖 😫 😩 😤 😮 😱 😨 😰 😯 😦 😧 😢 😥 😪 😓 😭 😵 😲 😷 😴

Vote to see result and collect 1 XP. Your vote is anonymous.
If you change your mind, you can change your vote simply by clicking on another option.