Unicode® Emoji

Emoji are pictographs (pictorial symbols) that are typically presented in a colorful form and used inline in text. They represent things such as faces, weather, vehicles and buildings, food and drink, animals and plants, or icons that represent emotions, feelings, or activities.

This page provides information about Unicode emoji and their development.

Unicode Emoji Resources

• Unicode Technical Report #51, Unicode Emoji (UTR #51): This document provides design guidelines and data for improving emoji interoperability across platforms, gives background information about emoji symbols, and describes how they are selected for inclusion in the Unicode Standard.
• Unicode Emoji Charts: These illustrate various features of the emoji characters in Unicode, and are intended to accompany the material in UTR #51.
• FAQ: Emoji and Dingbats: Frequently-asked questions and answers for several topics related to emoji.
• Emoji-related Press: A collection of emoji-related media articles and presentations.
• Unicode Utilities Emoji Set: Displays emoji characters as an LDML UnicodeSet; primarily intended for software developers.

Unicode Emoji Subcommittee

The Unicode Emoji Subcommittee is responsible for the following:

• Updating, revising, and extending emoji documents such as UTR #51, Unicode Emoji and Unicode Emoji Charts.
• Taking input from various sources and reviewing requests for new emoji characters.
• Creating proposals for the Unicode Technical Committee regarding additional emoji characters and new emoji-related mechanisms.
• Investigating longer-term mechanisms for supporting emoji as images (stickers).

The Unicode Emoji Subcommittee is a subcommittee of the Unicode Technical Committee operating under the Technical Committee Procedures. Current co-chairs are Mark Davis (Google) and Peter Edberg (Apple).

Participation in the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee weekly video/phone meetings and mailing list is open to members of the Unicode Consortium and invited experts. Contact us for more information.

External Emoji Resources

• Archived emoji4unicode Project: An archive of the emoji4unicode project used during 2008-2010 for work related to the encoding of the original Japanese carrier emoji set in Unicode 6.0.
• Emojipedia: Project to compile list of all emoji names and meanings; includes emoji news blog.
• Emojitracker: Realtime visualization of emoji use on Twitter.

---