While communicating in the digital world, one of the main elements that all users are surely in need of are emojis today. Emojis are as important as punctuation as they take the place of facial expressions and body language.

Using them to underscore our tone and emotions now comes naturally to many of us. Particularly after two years of social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic, they have come to seem almost indispensable.

But those who first came up with the idea of digital irony might never have envisaged the little icons' trajectory.

It all started on September 19, 40 years ago with emoticons, standard punctuation marks which were grouped together at a U.S. university to represent facial expressions, most notably what came to be known as the smiley face :-).

Since then, those combinations have evolved into the mini icons that we use so extensively today.

Modern-day emojis cover about every area of life, from facial expressions to hand gestures and objects to the weather.

"They help to underscore how a statement is to be understood," said linguist Erika Linz from Germany's University of Bonn, whose research focuses on language and communication in digital media.

'Wars of words'

In face-to-face communication, the speaker's facial expression, gestures and tone provide us with important clues about what they're saying, whether something is meant ironically, for example.

When he implemented the emoticon at his Pittsburgh university in 1982, U.S. computer scientist Scott E. Fahlman hoped it would help to prevent misunderstandings in digital communication, which then took place via the school's bulletin board system (BBS).

Back then, the system was mainly used by nerds with a tendency for sarcasm, Fahlman told the German Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper earlier this year. But many people struggled with understanding the intention behind the posts and wrote back in earnest, with real "wars of words" ensuing, Fahlman said.

From there, people started discussing the possibility of marking their jokes as such, in a debate that wasn't serious at first either. But on Sept. 19, 1982, Fahlman posted his suggestion which would have implications so far-reaching he could have hardly foreseen it at the time: combining a colon, minus sign and bracket to depict a smiley face to indicate that something is meant humorously

The researcher later said he had only intended the idea as temporary amusement for other users, but it soon took off and began spreading beyond the university, fuelled by the onset of the internet.

The golden age of emojis

Today, emojis are not only used to indicate how a statement is to be understood but are also increasingly replacing punctuation marks, said Linz. When a little icon is used instead of a period at the end of a sentence, for example, its meaning becomes "expressive," according to the linguist.

Emojis also help to economize communication, with a thumbs-up symbol often used to quickly signal agreement, for example.

Conversely, the lack of emojis in a message has also taken on significance, as that is often used to convey a more serious tone. Many people have developed a sense for when to use emojis and when it's better to leave them out, said Linz.

Students of hers recently analyzed the use of emojis by celebrities on Instagram, finding that actors and actresses tend to use them more often than politicians, for example.

However, Linz believes that the little icons will increasingly be used in formal communication in the long term as well. "The triumph of emojis is unstoppable," she said.

Regardless, that won't ever completely eliminate the risk of misunderstandings, the researcher said, as even the meaning of an emoji can sometimes be ambiguous and people tend to use them in different contexts with different meanings implied.

From that point of view, maybe it was the simplicity of Fahlman's original idea that helped the concept take off.