The smiley face has proved remarkably durable, however, getting a major lift with smartphones, as text messaging became more widespread and the Unicode Consortium, a global standard-setting group for computer text, began adding thousands of new emojis to its catalogue over the past 10 years.
This time around, Unicode launched version 14.0 of its language coding standard on Tuesday, complete with 37 new emojis, over 800 new characters, and support for lesser-used languages and symbols. The new emojis include a face holding back tears, heart hands, a low battery indicator, and objects like coral.
Though the new code debuts today, you won't be able to incorporate the new emojis into your texts for a while. The Unicode Consortium expects the new code to launch widely on computers and mobile phones next year.
The new emojis also include what the organization describes as 75 skin tone variations. The Unicode site has more details on the code itself and the emojis therein. According to emojipedia.com, the final version of Unicode 14.0 is the same as the draft previewed in July.
Unicode 14.0 includes 838 new characters, of which 37 are brand new emoji code points.
Additionally, 75 skin tone variations do not require new code points and are included as part of Emoji 14.0, making for a total of 112 new emojis on their way to devices in the coming months.
Among the new emoji characters in this release are Coral (partly to represent the effects of climate change), gender options for pregnancy have been added using new code points in this release.
A change to the usual format where emoji sequences are used for gender variations. Pregnant Person and Pregnant Man are both new code points, part of Unicode's ongoing effort to make gender options consistent for all emojis.
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