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Jessica Bennett of the NYTimes writes about how emoji are replacing words in emails. on twitter and other social media, even though it might be less time to type in the words. Although use is skyrocketing, communication by emoji is open to interpretation by the recipient. There are now sites, blogs, and a social network (Emoji.li) that uses only emoji for communication. A nonprofit devoted to emoji standardization across platforms (Unicode Consortium) has been formed. Examples: In their short life, emoji managed to find an exceptional cultural range: One Internet wit put out an emoji translation of Beyoncé's "Drunk in Love," and an emoji-only version of "Moby Dick," called "Emoji Dick," was recently accepted into the Library of Congress. Legal experts have even discussed whether an emoji death threat [gun and face] could be admissible in court. "I'm not sure you can really speak of it as a full-fledged language yet," said Ben Zimmer, a linguist, "but it does seem to have fascinating combinatorial possibilities. Any sort of symbolic system, when it's used for communication, is going to develop dialects."

I am certainly out of the loop on this one! A whole new language is developing - back to cave drawings but in a digital format?

Article on use of Emoji and what they communicate: "Sure, it might sound a bit odd that a new, long-distance relationship could fizzle because a tiny icon was misused, yet these types of messaging miscommunications happen often (though perhaps not quite as comically). The emoji icons can be baffling to the American adults who, whether they realize it or not, are taking their social cues from Japanese teenagers."

Communication issues using emoji and not understanding the etiquette and expectations emoji use engender.