Pass notesEmojisTired? Bored? Supremely unconcerned? Thanks to the latest rollout of digital icons, soon we’ll all be able to express our lack of enthusiasm in tiny circular form
Name: Yawning Face emoji.
Age: Unveiled 224 days ago, as part of Emoji 12.0.
Appearance: Whatever.
I think you should at least make an effort to describe it. It’s like a smiley face, but yawning. Happy?
And it’s new, is it? Honestly, it’s just not that big a deal.
I’d just like to know where it comes from, is all. It’s a really boring story.
Still. Fine: like all emojis, the yawning emoji was born of a two-year process that starts with a proposal to the Unicode Consortium, an international nonprofit organisation that sets the standard for the representation of characters across various programmes and platforms.
You’re kidding. I wish. In its most recent annual update, Unicode announced the introduction of Yawning Face – AKA U+1F971 – along with dozens of other emojis.
But who proposes new emojis in the first place? Anyone can submit a proposal, but successful emojis must meet all the criteria.
Which criteria? Emojis must be graphically legible when very small, and they have to be useful.
What possible communicative uses could there be for a yawning emoji? Actually, now that it’s here, I can’t think of an occasion on which I wouldn’t use it.
Because you’re tired all the time? Tired, or bored, or supremely unconcerned, or merely underwhelmed, or peremptorily dismissive of enthusiasm shown by others.
I see what you mean. What did we ever do without a yawning emoji? I can’t remember. I think we used to type out the word “yawn”.
Every time? How tiresome. Exactly. Yawn.
Where is it, though? I can’t find a yawning face among the sea of little round emoting heads on my phone’s menu. That’s probably because you’ve got an iPhone. Each “vendor” is responsible for adding the new batches of emojis and Apple hasn’t done so yet. Yawning Face will be included in the iOS 13.2 update, which is due out imminently; it has been rolled out on Twitter and Facebook, as well as Microsoft, Samsung and Google devices.
So, what other fun and useful emojis can we expect this autumn? There are some new hearing aid and wheelchair symbols, while the Holding Hands emoji will be available in 75 permutations of gender and skin tone. Also garlic, a plate of falafel and a five-string banjo.
Huh. What if I wanted specifically to reference a four-string banjo? There’s still time to get your proposal in for next year.
Do say: “I couldn’t care less about the new Yawning Face emoji [Yawning Face emoji].”
Don’t say: “Man, I stayed up so late last night! U+1F971 U+1F971 U+1F971.”
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