Users have long agitated for more — and more diverse — emoji, arguing that the popular Japanese pictographs simply don’t contain enough characters for modern, global communication. Today, with the release of Unicode Version 7, the organization that standardizes text across the software industry has responded … albeit not the way many users had hoped.
Unicode’s list of “approximately 250” new emoji, which are highlighted in yellow in the new unicode charts released today, include lots of useful (and diverting!) symbols. There’s a hot pepper, a chipmunk, an admission ticket, a hand with a raised middle finder … a fax. But they don’t introduce the racial and cultural diversity many had asked for, with the possible exception of a few new religious icons: several variations on the cross and a symbol for “om.”
Of course, as Unicode has had to explain many times over, it just standardizes the basic body of text across platforms — it doesn’t chose how they look on your computer or phone. That’s up to developers like Apple, who decide how to render Unicode characters … as well as which characters to render, at all. Just because the middle finger shows up in the Unicode charts, for instance, doesn’t mean it’ll be coming to an iPhone near you. And just because Unicode didn’t forcibly introduce diversity into this new version doesn’t mean that Apple couldn’t make that change independently. (In fact, the company indicated in March that it plans to do so.)
You can see Unicode’s basic black-and-white renderings of the new emoji on its charts for emoticons, transport and map symbols and miscellaneous symbols and pictographs. While the organization hasn’t compiled a single list of new emoji — and told The Post in an email that they didn’t “know anything about Emojipedia,” the emoji Web site circulating such a list — they did say the new characters were indicated on Unicode’s charts in yellow, and that there were “approximately 250” in total.
These are, in no particular order, all the new emoji we counted on those charts.
- Slightly frowning face
- Slightly smiling face
- Triangle with rounded corners
- Prohibited sign
- Circled information source
- Boys symbol
- Girls symbol
- Couch and lamp
- Sleeping accommodation
- Shopping bags
- Bellhop bell
- Hammer and wrench
- Shield
- Oil drum
- Motorway
- Railway train
- Motor boat
- Up-pointing military airplane
- Up-pointing airplane
- Up-pointing small airplane
- Small airplane
- Northeast-pointing airplane
- Airplane departure
- Airplane arriving
- Satellite
- Oncoming fire engine
- Diesel locomotive
- Passenger ship
- Thermometer
- Black droplet
- White sun
- = sunny
- White sun with small cloud
- White sun behind cloud
- White sun behind cloud with rain
- Cloud with rain
- Cloud with snow
- Cloud with lightning
- Cloud with tornado
- Fog
- Wind blow
- Hot pepper
- Fork and knife with plate
- Heart with tip on the left
- Bouquet of flowers
- Military medal
- Reminder ribbon
- Musical keyboard with jacks
- Studio microphone
- Level slider
- Control knob
- Beamed ascending musical notes
- Beamed descending musical notes
- Film frames
- Admission tickets
- Sports medal
- Weight lifter
- Golfer
- Racing motorcycle
- Racing car
- Snow capped mountain
- Camping
- Beach with umbrella
- Building construction
- House buildings
- Cityscape
- Derelict house building
- Classical building
- Desert
- Desert island
- National park
- Stadium
- House buildings
- White pennant
- Black pennant
- Waving white flag
- Waving black flag
- Rosette
- Black rosette
- Label
- Chipmunk
- Eye
- Camera with flash
- Film projector
- Portable stereo
- Lower right shadowed white circle
- Upper right shadowed white circle
- Notched right semicircle with three dots
- Symbol for marks chapter
- White Latin cross
- Heavy Latin cross
- Celtic cross
- Om symbol
- Dove of peace
- Right speaker
- Right speaker with one sound wave
- Right speaker with three sound waves
- Bullhorn
- Bullhorn with sound waves
- Ringing bell
- Book
- Candle
- Mantelpiece clock
- Black skull and crossbones
- No piracy
- Hole
- Man in business suit levitating
- Sleuth or spy
- Dark sunglasses
- Spider
- Spider web
- Joystick
- Left hand telephone receiver
- Telephone receiver with page
- Right hand telephone receiver
- White touch-tone telephone
- Black touch-tone telephone
- Telephone on top of modem
- Clamshell mobile phone
- Back of envelope
- Stamped envelope
- Envelope with lightning
- Flying envelope
- Pen over stamped envelope
- Linked paperclips
- Black pushpin
- Lower left pencil
- Lower left ballpoint pen
- Lower left fountain pen
- Lower left paintbrush
- Lower left crayon
- Left writing hand
- Turned okay hand sign
- Raised hand with fingers splayed
- Reversed raised hand with fingers splayed
- Reversed thumbs up sign
- Reversed thumbs down sign
- Reversed victory hand
- Reversed hand with middle finger extended
- Raised hand with part between middle and ring fingers
- White down pointing left hand index
- Sideways white left pointing index
- Sideways white right pointing index
- Sideways black left pointing index
- Sideways black right pointing index
- Black left pointing backhand index
- Black right pointing backhand index
- Sideways white up pointing index
- Sideways white down pointing index
- Sideways black up pointing index
- Sideways black down pointing index
- Black up pointing backhand index
- Black down pointing backhand index
- Desktop computer
- Keyboard and mouse
- Three networked computers
- Printer
- Pocket calculator
- Black hard shell floppy disk
- White hard shell floppy disk
- Soft shell floppy disk
- Tape cartridge
- Wired keyboard
- One button mouse
- Two button mouse
- Three button mouse
- Trackball
- Old personal computer
- Hard disk
- Screen
- Printer icon
- Fax icon
- Optical disc icon
- Document with text
- Document with text and picture
- Document with picture
- Frame with picture
- Frame with tiles
- Frame with an x
- Black folder
- Folder
- Open folder
- Card index dividers
- Card file box
- File cabinet
- Empty note
- Empty note page
- Empty note pad
- Note
- Note page
- Note pad
- Empty document
- Empty page
- Empty pages
- Document
- Page
- Pages
- Wastebasket
- Spiral note pad
- Spiral calendar pad
- Desktop window
- Minimize
- Maximize
- Overlap
- Clockwise right and left semicircle
- Arrows
- Cancellation x
- Increase font size symbol
- Decrease font size symbol
- Compression
- Old key
- Rolled-up newspaper
- Page with circled text
- Stock chart
- Dagger knife
- Lips
- Speaking head in silhouette
- Three rays above
- Three rays below
- Three rays left
- Three rays right
- Left speech bubble
- Right speech bubble
- Two speech bubbles
- Three speech bubbles
- Left thought bubble
- Right thought bubble
- Left anger bubble
- Right anger bubble
- Mood bubble
- Lightning mood bubble
- Lightning mood
- Ballot box with ballot
- Ballot script x
- Ballot box with script x
- Ballot bold script x
- Ballot box with bold script x
- Light check mark
- Ballot box with bold check
- World map
