OUR WORLD

PAST. PRESENT. FUTURE.

- BY DANNY DE VAAL

THE “tears of joy” emoji remains the most popular in the world but the red heart is a close second, an Irish expert has revealed.

Keith Broni, who is the editor in chief of Emojipedia.org, which is the world’s number one emoji resource, said the icons are no longer considered “frivolous” and are a “cornerstone of digital communication”.

The Dubliner also stressed the use of symbols is constantly changing and believes there's an unused one that will surge in popularity in years to come.

When asked why they are so popular Mr Broni, who spoke to The Star for World Emoji Day, said: “Texts are dry without any kind of semantic markers. We don't write text messages as if they're prose where there are cues... we write text messages as if they're verbal speech.

ELEMENTS

“And when we speak face to face or even over the phone there are what we call paralinguistic cues.