๐Ÿ’ฌ The Wrap

217 new emojis! That's how many were approved in the most recent list from Unicode, and have just come to iOS 14.5 in its latest beta. What does that mean in practice?

Three new smileys, two new hearts, 10 variations of the bearded person emoji, and 200 variations of the emoji couples.

Why call it 217 new emojis then? Well, it's tricky to use a smaller number. Does the new ๐Ÿง”โ€โ™€๏ธ Woman: Beard emoji count as a new emoji to you? Probably. What about the skin tone options for it? Maybe?

It's surely worth noting that ๐Ÿ’‘ Couple with Heart and its similar versions ๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€โค๏ธโ€๐Ÿ‘จ๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€โค๏ธโ€๐Ÿ‘ฉ๐Ÿ‘จโ€โค๏ธโ€๐Ÿ‘จ๐Ÿ’๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€โค๏ธโ€๐Ÿ’‹โ€๐Ÿ‘ฉ๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€โค๏ธโ€๐Ÿ’‹โ€๐Ÿ‘จ๐Ÿ‘จโ€โค๏ธโ€๐Ÿ’‹โ€๐Ÿ‘จ will support mixed skin tones right? This has been much requested for years, especially for those with darker skin tones. The yellow is meant to be neutral, but is in effect more useful for those with light skin.

These won't be only-yellow on the keyboard any more. Allowing each person in those emojis a different skin tone adds up to 200 new emojis.

What Emojipedia ends up doing is counting the 'big number' then explaining it. Whether you count this update as five new emojis, or two hundred and seventeen new emojis is up to you. We're just trying to give a consistent answer.

If we called this "five new emojis plus some gender options plus some couples options" I'm not sure that helps, especially not over time. Whatever the number: they're coming to more phones in the coming months, and I love the ambiguity of the face in clouds. And who hasn't wanted to exhale at some point in the past year, week, or day?

Jeremy Burge

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๐Ÿ“จ This month's newsletter has been compiled by me, Jeremy Burge. I'm the founder and Chief Emoji Officer at Emojipedia, who occasionally TikToks about boat living.