Emoji vs emoticon

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Grammarist

An emoji is an image small enough to insert into text that expresses an emotion or idea. Emoji are most often used in emails and text messages, though may be found in any type of electronic communication. The word emoji is a combination of the Japanese word e which means picture, and moji which means character. Emojis were first used in cell phone communication in Japan in 1999. Emoji and emojis are both considered correct plural forms of the word emoji. Oxford English Dictionary chose an emoji crying tears of joy as the word of the year of 2015.

An emoticon is a representation of a human facial expression using only keyboard characters such as letters, numbers and punctuation marks. Emoticons became popular in the 1990s with the advent of emails and texting. The word emoticon is a portmanteau, made by combining the words emotion and icon. Remember, an emoticon is built from keyboard characters that when put together in a certain way represent a facial expression, an emoji is an actual image.

Examples

So Jimmy Kimmel came up with another idea for selling the annual event to those precious younger viewers: translate it into emoji. (Entertainment Weekly)

Many Japanese cell makers let users send emoji years before Apple and Google adopted them. (The Atlantic)

According to an interesting survey, people who think about sex several times a day also use emoji icons the most often. (The Times of India)

For her ‘Boomerang selfie’ with the First Lady, senior writer Prachi convinces her to help her in imitated the raised-palm pose like the ‘Hey Girl Hey’ emoticon. (The Daily Mail)

We’re not too good for emoticons. They’re just not the novelty they once were in, say, 2001. (The Huffington Post)

Thirty-three years ago today, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University invented the emoticon. (Business INsider)