‘emojistan’: a new world

Emojis Removing The Need For Words

Manisha Mishra, AIS Noida, X H

Imagine it is 9 PM; you have a test tomorrow with a huge syllabus to prepare. Suddenly, you get a text from your friend which reads ‘Going for a movie, wanna join?’ It’s been two days that you’ve had any proper meal or sleep; you’ve forgotten what sunlight looks like, and here is your friend asking you to go out for a movie. How do you respond? Obvious as it is, no words can describe how tired and anxious you are at this point of time. So, the best reply is not a rant, but a sobbing emoji with a capital ‘CAN’T’. Emojis are a saviour. And did you know they have an entire day dedicated just to them? That’s July 17   (aka World Emoji Day) by the way! Well, if emoji can be the Word of the Year for 2015, then a day every year is no big deal.
Emojis are definitely the way to go, but there has been a lot of discussion as to where? Some say that emojis will take us back to the times when Egyptians used hieroglyphs. On the other hand, it is also said that they help in a better understanding of the textual communication.

An emoji for everything
So the Japanese created emoji. There have been a lot of instances where people misunderstood a plain text, where being sarcastic was mistaken as being rude. What is the point of one-liners if you have to explain them too! Now, you don’t have to be serious all the time, just add a smiley face or a wink and you’re good to go.

Why? Because we can
Around 3.2 billion people across the world have access to the internet, and 92% of them use emoji on a regular basis. Shocking? Not so much! Given the amount of emojis we use daily, we wouldn’t be surprised if everyone else was using them too. As a matter of fact, people who are above the age of 35 find it easier to convey their messages through emojis. My mother, for  example, loves sending me different emojis whenever I ask her about what she’s doing.

Emoji language?
They say that a picture speaks a thousand words. Focus on words. No matter what number of emojis we come up with, we will always associate them with words if they are trying to form a sentence. Say, if you ask someone what they’re doing, and they reply with a car emoji and a girl/boy emoji, it gets very apparent that they’re travelling. Hence, it is impossible for emojis to become a language, mostly because they lack grammar. So no, emojis are not going to take over the world.

Long live emoji!
Emojis are here to stay and that’s for sure. They have helped improve our texts at both ends. They are at our rescue when we don’t have the right words (or don’t really feel like looking for them). When we get a text in the middle of the night and we’re just squinting our eyelids at the phone, the best way out is to click that little ‘thumbs-up’ button at the bottom of the keyboard and go back to being the incompetent lazy selves that we are. If emojis have made us sluggish, they have also assisted our plain, boring texts with life-like virtual expressions and made them more fun. For all that they do, I think they do deserve a day of the year.

I’ve a confession

Own your mistakes

Vanya Verma, AIS PV, V

Our vacations were due in the next two days. My friends and I could not stop beaming with joy. In the madness of excitement, we ended up scrawling the names of places we planned to visit during the vacations on the top of our desks.
Just then, as bad luck would have it, a teacher was on the round to check the furniture for any repairs, before the school shut down. She was furious with all the scribbling. When reprimanded, I mumbled that it was my friend Rohan’s fault. Rohan was absent that day.
The teacher summoned Rohan the next day. She scolded Rohan, who was absolutely clueless about the whole thing, and he ended up crying inconsolably. Of course, there was the embarrassment of being scolded in front of the entire class.
I realised I had made a huge mistake so I stood up and confessed to scribbling on the table. The teacher was angry, but let me go on grounds of my honesty. I swore that I would never even think of doing such a thing in the future.