[Image above] Credit: go digital; Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0
I love words, but sometimes words alone aren’t enough to accurately convey your intended meaning.
Especially when it comes to digital communications, where we rely on text by itself to convey sarcasm, elation, disappointment, or any number of other emotional undertones (or overtones).
So I, for one, am a big fan of emojis. How about you—do you use emojis when you text, message, or email?
I’m going to take an educated guess that you said yes—more than 90% of online populations incorporate smiley faces, thumbs up, or other emojis into their digital communications, according to Cell Press.
But have you noticed that the emoji world is rather lacking in the science department?
Your smartphone’s keyboard probably already includes a microscope 🔬, telescope 🔭 , alembic ⚗, and maybe a scientist 👩🔬 emoji—but that’s it.
To convey all the incredible science in the world, that’s it.
Scientists and science lovers rejoice—the American Chemical Society and GE think the emoji world should up its science game, and together they’re trying to make it happen.
ACS and GE recently proposed nine new scientific emojis to be considered to enter the official emoji lexicon later this year—a lab coat, test tube, microbe, petri dish, DNA, compass, abacus, fire extinguisher, and goggles.
“Emojis have become an essential communication tool in today’s society, with more than 6 billion emojis and emoticons sent around the world every day on mobile messaging apps. Science emojis would boost—and help demystify—science in modern conversation, and ACS is committed to ensuring that science and scientists are represented,” ACS executive director and CEO Thomas J. Connelly Jr. says in an ACS press release.
The official emoji lexicon is maintained by Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit organization that develops and maintains international software standards. In addition to the more than one thousand emojis already available, Unicode adds around 70 new ones every year.
So later this fall, a Unicode review board will evaluate all potential new emojis, and those selected will begin official use as early as 2018. Those nine science emojis proposed by ACS and GE are a handful of the many potential new emojis that will be considered.
My fingers are crossed that at least some of the new science emojis soon enter the mainstream of digital communications.🤞🏻