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I dunno emoji5/19/2023 How you use emoji-and which emoji you use-is related to where you're from your age, ethnicity, and gender and your culture. No, not at all! And that's no surprise since we don't all use language the same way, either. You might interpret a similar vibe if the person wrote, “Yes!!!” We may be using punctuation in online communication really differently than the formal writing rules we learned in middle school, but it would seem emoji have taken their place at the end of text messages, Slacks, and beyond! You may have heard that the period is a fraught punctuation mark for some generations, but we might use emoji in a similar way to mark the end of a thought! Look at the example above: "Yes □ □ □" is, kind of, punctuated by those raised hands. If you’re excited about something, replying “Yes” is one way to do it, but “Yes □ □ □” conveys both agreement and excitement! For example, “thank you” on its own might seem incomplete without a ❤️ if you want to express deeper gratitude. We also use emoji to add information to help the recipient understand our intended meaning. Emoji serve the same purposes in written language! You might use the □ emoji to indicate reluctance (the way that, if you were speaking, you might slow your speech and change your intonation and voice to show you’re not thrilled about something) or the □to express curiosity, which we can usually hear or see visually (by our voice going “up” at the end of a sentence! In spoken language, we use the rhythm of our voice to give emphasis to certain words and phrases, and sign languages use visual rhythm. The right emoji can help the person you're writing to know whether you're being sarcastic (□), skeptical (□), or over it (□)-all information we convey in person but that we may not want to explicitly say in words when writing. In person there are times when we want to let our pals know that we're listening or give a reaction without interrupting, and emoji give us a way to do this in writing! Emoji let us nod (□), shrug (□♀️), and do all sorts of things we might do with our hands and body language in person! We often use emoji to express things we're used to doing in person in speech or signing, but emoji is evolving as its own system, too! Neither is right or wrong, because language is constantly changing and adapting! Emoji are more than meets the □ But when a language borrows a word, it might eventually start applying its own grammatical rules to it-so English speakers have started adding the "-s" ending for plural nouns. Well, both! □ The word comes from the Japanese words for "picture" and "character," and was originally "emoji" (with an ending like in kanji, one of the Japanese writing systems). But before we share the data, let’s talk a little bit about how emoji function in language! Is it "emoji" or "emojis"? □ Of course you do! It's through emoji! □ In celebration of World Emoji Day, we partnered with the workplace communication experts at Slack to learn more about how people all over the world communicate with emoji. So how do we add that nuance, style, and flavor to language when we write? We bet you already know one of the ways we do this… □ When we sign or speak a language, we use a lot more than words to get our point across: We use our faces and bodies to give our messages nuance, to help the people we interact with know if we're being serious or silly, skeptical or confident, and we use rhythm and intonation to help clarify what we're trying to say. Writing is a really hard skill to do well, whether it's in your first language or a new language.
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