[Image: Apple] The top three most popular emoji are the joy smiley face emoji (conveys teary-eyed laughter), used a whopping 9.9% of the time; the red heart emoji, used 6.6% of the time; and the ...

An update to Unicode Standard is now available, and introduces approximately 250 emoji pictographic symbols. The emojis are a part of the Unicode 7.0 software update from Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

The smiley face and heart icons popular in text messages predate today's smartphones. To trace their roots, you have to go back to Japan in the mid-1990s, when pagers were all the rage with teens.

How to Make a Heart Symbol Without a Number Keypad By Leonardo R. Grabkowski , Contributor Keep a printout of your "Alt" Unicode shortcuts on your desk for quick reference.

July 17 is Emoji day - chosen because that is the date shown on most calendar emojis. The first emoji were invented by Japanese designer Shigetaka Kurita in 1999, and have since become so popular that ...