What are kaomoji?
Kaomoji are Japanese-style emoticons: faces built from characters that you read upright, like (◕‿◕). The word joins kao, face, and moji, character. They borrow from alphabets all over the world to get the right shape. The eyes of (ಠ_ಠ) are a letter from Kannada, and the paws of ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ are a Thai letter.
Every face on this page has a label saying what it means, which is also what a screen reader announces instead of reading out each character.
Where did emoticons come from?
The sideways smiley :-) was proposed by Scott Fahlman at Carnegie Mellon University on 19 September 1982, as a way to mark jokes on an online message board. Kaomoji grew up on Japanese computer networks in the mid-1980s and spread because you didn't have to tilt your head to read them. The classic sideways faces are at the bottom of this page, for anyone who wants the original.
Why do some emoticons show as boxes?
The phone's font doesn't have one of the characters. Kaomoji draw on dozens of scripts, and an older phone, or an app with its own font, may be missing a rare one and shows an empty box instead. The puppy ૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა, for example, borrows a Gujarati digit and a Georgian letter. If a face shows a box for your friend, pick another from the same mood.
Why does the shrug emoticon lose an arm?
Because of the backslash. Discord, Reddit and other apps that use Markdown formatting treat a backslash as an instruction, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ arrives as ¯_(ツ)_/¯, one arm short. Type an extra backslash before the one in the shrug, ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯, and the arm comes back.
Do emoticons fit in a text message?
Easily. The longest face here is 14 characters, and every one fits in a single SMS. The classic sideways faces, :-) ;-) :-D :-P <3 :3 and uwu, use only standard SMS characters, so they don't change how your message is counted. Almost every kaomoji switches the message to Unicode, which cuts the room in one text from 160 characters to 70. In a short message that doesn't matter. In a long one, our SMS character counter shows where the limit falls.
Should you use an emoticon or an emoji?
Use an emoticon when you want it to work everywhere text works, or when you want more attitude than an emoji has. Emoji are pictures your phone draws; emoticons are made of characters, so they paste into game chats, plain-text fields and old phones that turn emoji into boxes. And a 😠 is only angry, while (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ has actually done something about it.
What do the most-used emoticons mean?
- (ಠ_ಠ) A flat stare of disapproval. For when a friend says something you can't let slide.
- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ A shrug: no idea, or not my problem.
- (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ Flipping a table in frustration. The reply is ┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ), putting it back.
- uwu Soft, happy or affectionate. The u's are closed eyes and the w is a mouth.
- (¬‿¬) A sly, teasing grin.
- ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ A bear reaching out for a hug.