UTS #51: Unicode Emoji

Summary
This document defines the structure of Unicode emoji characters and
sequences, and provides data to support that structure, such as which
characters are considered to be emoji, which emoji should be displayed by
default with a text style versus an emoji style, and which can be
displayed with a variety of skin tones.
It also provides design guidelines for improving the interoperability of
emoji characters across platforms and implementations.
Starting with Version 11.0 of this specification, the repertoire of
emoji characters is synchronized with the Unicode Standard, and has the same
version numbering system. For details, see Section 1.5.2,
Versioning.
Status
This document has been reviewed by Unicode members and other
interested parties, and has been approved for publication by the
Unicode Consortium. This is a stable document and may be used as
reference material or cited as a normative reference by other
specifications.
A Unicode Technical Standard (UTS) is an independent specification.
Conformance to the Unicode Standard does not imply conformance to any UTS.
Please submit corrigenda and other comments with the online reporting form [Feedback].
Related information that is useful in understanding this document is
found in the References. For the latest
version of the Unicode Standard, see [Unicode]. For a
list of current Unicode Technical Reports, see [Reports]. For more
information about versions of the Unicode Standard, see [Versions].
Emoji are pictographs (pictorial symbols) that are typically
presented in a colorful cartoon form and used inline in text. They
represent things such as faces, weather, vehicles and buildings, food
and drink, animals and plants, or icons that represent emotions,
feelings, or activities.
Emoji on smartphones and in chat and email applications have become
extremely popular worldwide. As of March 2015, for example, Instagram
reported that “nearly half of text [on Instagram] contained emoji.”
Individual emoji also vary greatly in popularity (and even by country),
as described in the SwiftKey Emoji Report. See
emoji press page for details
about these reports and others.
Emoji are most often used in quick, short social media messages, where
they connect with the reader and add flavor, color,
and emotion. Emoji do not have the grammar or vocabulary to
substitute for written language. In social media, emoji make up for
the lack of gestures, facial expressions, and intonation that are
found in speech. They also add useful ambiguity to messages, allowing
the writer to convey many different possible concepts at the same
time. Many people are also attracted by the challenge of composing
messages in emoji, and puzzling out emoji messages.
Emoji may be represented internally as graphics or they may be
represented by normal glyphs encoded in fonts like other characters.
These latter are called emoji characters for clarity. Some
Unicode characters are normally displayed as emoji; some are normally
displayed as ordinary text, and some can be displayed both ways.
There’s been considerable media
attention to emoji since they appeared in the Unicode Standard, with
increased attention starting in late 2013. For example, there were
some 6,000 articles on the emoji appearing in Unicode 7.0, according
to Google News. See the emoji
press page for many samples of such articles, and also the Keynote from the 38th
Internationalization & Unicode Conference.
Emoji became available in 1999 on Japanese mobile phones. There
was an early proposal in 2000 to encode DoCoMo emoji in the Unicode
standard. At that time, it was unclear whether these characters would
come into widespread use—and there was not support from the Japanese
mobile phone carriers to add them to Unicode—so no action was taken.
The emoji turned out to be quite popular in Japan, but each
mobile phone carrier developed different (but partially overlapping)
sets, and each mobile phone vendor used their own text encoding
extensions, which were incompatible with one another. The vendors
developed cross-mapping tables to allow limited interchange of emoji
characters with phones from other vendors, including email.
Characters from other platforms that could not be displayed were
represented with 〓 (U+3013 GETA MARK), but it was all too easy for
the characters to get corrupted or dropped.
When non-Japanese email and mobile phone vendors started to support
email exchange with the Japanese carriers, they ran into those
problems. Moreover, there was no way to represent these characters in
Unicode, which was the basis for text in all modern programs. In
2006, Google started work on converting Japanese emoji to Unicode
private-use codes, leading to the development of internal mapping
tables for supporting the carrier emoji via Unicode characters in 2007.
There are, however, many problems with a private-use approach,
and thus a proposal was made to the Unicode Consortium to expand the
scope of symbols to encompass emoji. This proposal was approved in
May 2007, leading to the formation of a symbols subcommittee, and in
August 2007 the technical committee agreed to support the encoding of
emoji in Unicode based on a set of principles developed by the
subcommittee. The following are a few of the documents tracking the
progression of Unicode emoji characters.
In 2009, the first Unicode characters explicitly intended as
emoji were added to Unicode 5.2 for interoperability with the ARIB
(Association of Radio Industries and Businesses) set. A set of 722
characters was defined as the union of emoji characters used by
Japanese mobile phone carriers: 114 of these characters were already
in Unicode 5.2. In 2010, the remaining 608 emoji characters were
added to Unicode 6.0, along with some other emoji characters. In
2012, a few more emoji were added to Unicode 6.1, and in 2014 a
larger number were added to Unicode 7.0.
Additional characters have been added since then, based on the
Selection Factors found in Guidelines for Submitting Unicode Emoji
Proposals.
Here is a summary of when some of the major sources of
pictographs used as emoji were encoded in Unicode. Each source
may include other characters in addition to emoji, and
Unicode characters can correspond to multiple sources. The L column
contains single-letter abbreviations of the various sources
for use in charts [emoji-charts] and data
files [emoji-data]. Characters that do not
correspond to any of these sources can be marked with Other (x).
For a detailed view of when various source sets of emoji were added
to Unicode, see Emoji Version Sources [emoji-charts]. The data file [JSources]
shows the correspondence to the original Japanese carrier symbols.
People often ask how many emoji are in the Unicode Standard. This
question does not have a simple answer, because there is no clear
line separating which pictographic characters should be displayed
with a typical emoji style. For a complete picture, see Which Characters are Emoji.
The colored images used in this document and associated charts [emoji-charts]
are for illustration only. They do not appear in the Unicode
Standard, which has only black and white images. They are either made
available by the respective vendors for use in this document, or are
believed to be available for non-commercial reuse. Inquiries for
permission to use vendor images should be directed to those vendors,
not to the Unicode Consortium. For more information, see Rights to Emoji Images.
The term emoticon refers to a series of text characters
(typically punctuation or symbols) that is meant to represent a
facial expression or gesture (sometimes when viewed sideways), such
as the following.
;-)
Emoticons predate Unicode and
emoji,
but were later adapted to include Unicode characters. The
following examples use not only ASCII characters, but also U+203F ( ‿
), U+FE35 ( ︵ ), U+25C9 ( ◉ ), and U+0CA0 ( ಠ ).
^‿^
◉︵◉
ಠ_ಠ
Often implementations allow emoticons to be used to input emoji. For
example, the emoticon ;-) can be mapped to in a
chat window. The term emoticon is sometimes used in a
broader sense, to also include the emoji for facial expressions and
gestures. That broad sense is used in the Unicode block name Emoticons,
covering the code points from U+1F600 to U+1F64F.
Unicode is the foundation for text in all modern software: it’s how
all mobile phones, desktops, and other computers represent the text
of every language. People are using Unicode every time they type a
key on their phone or desktop computer, and every time they look at a
web page or text in an application. It is very important that the
standard be stable, and that every character that goes into it be
scrutinized carefully. This requires a formal process with a long
development cycle. For example, the dark
sunglasses character was first proposed years before it was released
in Unicode 7.0.
Characters considered for encoding must normally be in widespread use
as elements of text. The emoji and various symbols were added to
Unicode because of their use as characters for text-messaging in a
number of Japanese manufacturers’ corporate standards, and other
places, or in long-standing use in widely distributed fonts such as
Wingdings and Webdings. In many cases, the characters were added for
complete round-tripping to and from a source set, not
because they were inherently of more importance than other
characters. For example, the clamshell
phone character was included because it was in Wingdings and
Webdings, not because it is more important than, say, a “skunk”
character.
In some cases, a character was added to complete a set: for example,
a rugby football
character was added to Unicode 6.0 to complement the american
football character (the soccer ball had
been added back in Unicode 5.2). Similarly, a mechanism was added
that could be used to represent all country flags (those
corresponding to a two-letter unicode_region_subtag),
such as the flag for Canada,
even though the Japanese carrier set only had 10 country flags.
The data does not include non-pictographs, except for those in
Unicode that are used to represent characters from emoji sources, for
compatibility, such as:
or
Game pieces, such as the dominos (🀰 🀱 🀲 ... 🂑 🂒), are currently
not included as emoji, with the exceptions of U+1F0CF (
) PLAYING CARD BLACK JOKER and U+1F004 ( )
MAHJONG TILE RED DRAGON. These are included because they correspond
each to an emoji character from one of the carrier sets.
It also provides background information about emoji, and
discusses longer-term approaches to emoji.
As new Unicode characters are added or the “common practice”
for emoji usage changes, the data and recommendations supplied by
this document may change in accordance. Thus the recommendations and
data will change across versions of this document.
The following provide more formal definitions of some of the terms
used in this document. Readers who are more interested in other
features of the document may choose to continue from Section
2, Design Guidelines.
ED-1.
emoji — A colorful pictograph that can be used inline in text.
Internally the representation is either (a) an image, (b) an
encoded character, or (c) a sequence of encoded characters.
For (a) the term emoji image is used in this document. The term sticker may also be used.
For (b) the term emoji character is used where necessary for clarity.
For (c) the term emoji sequence is used for clarity.
ED-2. emoticon — (1) A series of text
characters (typically punctuation or symbols) that is meant to
represent a facial expression or gesture such as ;-) and
(2) in a broader sense, also includes emoji for facial expressions
and gestures.
ED-4.
extended pictographic character — a character that has the
Extended_Pictographic property.
These characters are pictographic, or otherwise similar in kind to characters
with the Emoji property.
The Extended_Pictographic property is used to customize segmentation
(as described in [UAX29] and [UAX14]) so that
possible future emoji ZWJ sequences will not break grapheme clusters, words, or lines.
Unassigned codepoints with Line_Break=ID in some blocks are also assigned the
Extended_Pictographic property. Those blocks are intended for future allocation of emoji
characters.
ED-5.
emoji component — A character that has the Emoji_Component
property.
These characters are used in emoji sequences but normally do not appear on emoji keyboards
as separate choices, such as keycap base characters or Regional_Indicator characters.
Some emoji components are emoji characters, and others
(such as tag characters and ZWJ) are not.
ED-8. text presentation
selector — The character U+FE0E VARIATION SELECTOR-15 (VS15),
used to request a text presentation for an emoji character.
(Also known as text variation selector
in prior versions of this specification.)
text_presentation_selector := \x{FE0E}
ED-8a. text
presentation sequence — A variation sequence
consisting of an emoji character
followed by a text presentation selector.
The only valid text presentation sequences
are those listed in emoji-variation-sequences.txt [emoji-data].
ED-9. emoji presentation
selector — The character U+FE0F VARIATION SELECTOR-16 (VS16),
used to request an emoji presentation for an emoji character.
(Also known as emoji variation selector
in prior versions of this specification.)
emoji_presentation_selector := \x{FE0F}
ED-9a. emoji
presentation sequence — A variation sequence consisting of an emoji character followed by a emoji presentation selector.
The tag_spec consists of all characters from U+E0020 TAG SPACE to U+E007E TAG TILDE.
Each tag_spec defines a particular visual variant to be applied to the tag_base character(s).
Though tag_spec includes the values U+E0041 TAG LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A .. U+E005A TAG LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z,
they are not used currently and are reserved for future extensions.
The tag_end consists of the character U+E007F CANCEL TAG, and must be used to terminate the sequence.
A sequence of tag characters that is not part of an emoji_tag_sequence is not a well-formed emoji tag sequence.
ED-17a. qualified
emoji character — An emoji character in a string that
(a) has default emoji presentation or
(b) is the first character in an emoji modifier sequence or
(c) is not a default emoji presentation character, but is the
first character in an emoji presentation sequence.
ED-18. fully-qualified
emoji — A qualified emoji character, or an emoji sequence in which each emoji character is qualified.
ED-18a. minimally-qualified
emoji — An emoji sequence in which the first character is qualified but the sequence is not fully qualified.
Each of these sets can be conceived of as a binary property; they are properties of strings. See UTS #18: Unicode Regular Expressions [UTS18] and UTR #23: The Unicode Character Property Model [UTR23] for more discussion.
ED-20. basic emoji set — The set of emoji characters and emoji presentation sequences listed in the emoji-sequences.txt file [emoji-data] under the type_field Basic_Emoji.
This is the set of emoji intended for general-purpose input.
This set excludes all those instances of an emoji component that are not intended for independent, direct input. Implementations should support independent display of emoji components in this set even if they are not made available for direct input.
Skin tone modifiers and hair components should be displayed even in isolation, but they should not (typically) be on the keyboard palette. These are included in Basic_Emoji.
Other components (U+20E3 COMBINING ENCLOSING KEYCAP, Regional Indicators, tag characters, ZWJ, and VS16) should never have an emoji presentation in isolation, but do occur as part of emoji sequences. These are not included in Basic_Emoji.
This set otherwise includes all instances of an emoji character with the property value Emoji_Presentation = Yes and all instances of a valid emoji presentation sequence whose base character has the property value Emoji_Presentation = No.
ED-21. emoji keycap sequence set — The specific set of emoji sequences listed in the emoji-sequences.txt file [emoji-data] under the type_field Emoji_Keycap_Sequence.
This is the set of all valid emoji keycap sequences.
Note: The following definitions use the acronym “RGI”
to mean “recommended for general interchange”, referring to that subset of some
larger set that is intended to be widely supported
across multiple platforms.
ED-22. RGI emoji modifier sequence set — The specific set of emoji sequences listed in the emoji-sequences.txt file [emoji-data] under the type_field RGI_Emoji_Modifier_Sequence.
This is the subset of all valid
emoji modifier sequences recommended for
general interchange.
ED-23. RGI emoji flag sequence set — The specific set of emoji sequences listed in the emoji-sequences.txt file [emoji-data] under the type_field RGI_Emoji_Flag_Sequence.
Character names in all capitals are the formal Unicode Name property values, such as U+1F473 MAN WITH TURBAN. The formal names are immutable internal identifiers, but often do not reflect the current practice for interpretation of the character.
Lowercase character names for existing characters or sequences are CLDR short names, such as U+1F473 person wearing turban.
The emoji properties are stable for each version of the data—they will not change for that version. They may, however, change between that version and a subsequent version. For example, isEmoji(♟)=false for Emoji Version 5.0, but true for Version 11.0.
Some emoji properties are not closed over certain string operations. For example:
isEmoji(toLowercase(X)) ≠ isEmoji(X) for the case of X=Ⓜ️, because:
isEmoji(Ⓜ️) = true
toLowercase(Ⓜ️) = ⓜ
isEmoji(ⓜ) = false
Casing operations may produce invalid variation sequences. While the following strings form a case pair, the emoji presentation
selector is not defined for ⓜ, and thus has no effect on its rendering:
The following EBNF can be used to quickly scan for possible emoji. Those possible emoji can then be
verified where necessary by performing validity tests according to the definitions, or checking against the RGI emoji set. It is much simpler
than the expressions currently in the definitions. It includes a superset of emoji
as a by-product of that simplicity, but the extras can be weeded out by validity tests.
From these EBNF rules a regex can be generated, as below. While this regex may seem
complex, it is far simpler than what would result from the definitions. Direct use of
the definitions would result in regex expressions which are many times more complicated,
and yet still require verification with validity tests.
Conformance to this specification is specified by the following clauses.
C1. An
implementation claiming conformance to this specification shall identify the
version of this specification to which conformance is claimed.
Each version of this specification has a minimum version of the Unicode Standard, which contains all the characters with Emoji=Yes. For example, an implementation that claims conformance to Emoji 5.0 must also have support for the Unicode 9.0 repertoire.
C2. An implementation
claiming conformance to this specification shall identify which of the
capabilities specified below are supported for which emoji sets
ED-20 through
ED-25. This must include at
least the C2a display capability for
set ED-20 basic emoji set.
For example, an implementation can declare that it supports the display,
editing and input capabilities for the
basic emoji set, and the display and
editing capabilities for the emoji
modifier sequence set, and may make no claim of capabilities for any
other sets.
The implementation provides a mechanism for inputting each of the characters
and sequences in the specified set as a single glyph with emoji
presentation.
An implementation may claim partial conformance to C2, specifying the set of characters that it does not support. For example, an implementation could claim conformance to C2 for all emoji sets and capabilities except for the set [⏏ {🇺🇳}], that is:
U+23CF eject button
U+1F1FA U+1F1F3 United Nations
C3. An implementation claiming conformance to this specification must not support an invalid emoji_flag_sequence or invalid or ill-formed emoji_tag_sequence for display or input, except for a fallback display depiction indicating the presence of an invalid sequence, such as .
A singleton emoji Regional Indicator may be displayed as a capital A..Z character with a special display
An implementation may support any of the following for display, editing, or input:
a single code point outside of the basic emoji set
an emoji sequence that would be in one of the emoji sets ED-20 through ED-25 except that it is missing one or more emoji presentation selectors
Starting with Version 11.0 of this specification, the repertoire of emoji characters is
synchronized with the Unicode Standard, and has the same version numbering system.
As of version 13.0, data file comments use the labeling convention “Ex.x”.
This label corresponds to the Emoji version when the emoji character or emoji sequence
was first defined in associated data files. For example, the label “E5.0” is associated with
Unicode Emoji, Version 5.0.
There are three special values used primarily for emoji characters before the official
release of Emoji 1.0 in 2015:
Label
Intended Coverage
E0.0
This label is used for special characters, including:
Most emoji component characters, regardless of when they were first encoded.
Other non-emoji characters in the data files.
E0.6
Emoji characters added to Unicode 6.0. This includes the emoji characters deriving
from Japanese carrier sets, as well as some characters from the ARIB Japanese
television standard.
E0.7
Emoji characters added to Unicode 7.0. This consists largely of emoji deriving
from the Windows Wingding and Webdings sets, but also includes more characters from
the ARIB Japanese television standard.
The following table shows the corresponding Emoji version and
Unicode Standard version, up through Version 15.0, including the labels used in data file comments.
Unicode characters can have many different presentations as
text. An “a” for example, can look quite different
depending on the font. Emoji characters can have two main kinds of
presentation:
an emoji presentation, with colorful and perhaps
whimsical shapes, even animated
a text presentation, such as black & white
More precisely, a text presentation is a simple foreground shape
whose color is determined by other information, such as setting
a color on the text, while an emoji
presentation determines the color(s) of the character, and is
typically multicolored. In other words, when someone changes the text
color in a word processor, a character with an emoji presentation
will not change color.
Any Unicode character can be presented with a text
presentation, as in the Unicode charts. For the emoji presentation,
both the name and the representative glyph in the Unicode chart
should be taken into account when designing the appearance of the
emoji, along with the images used by other vendors. The shape of the
character can vary significantly. For example, here are just a few of
the possible images for U+1F36D LOLLIPOP, U+1F36E CUSTARD, U+1F36F
HONEY POT, and U+1F370 SHORTCAKE:
While the shape of the character can vary significantly, designers
should maintain the same “core” shape, based on the shapes used
mostly commonly in industry practice. For example, a U+1F36F HONEY
POT encodes for a pictorial representation of a pot of honey, not for
some semantic like “sweet”. It would be unexpected to
represent U+1F36F HONEY POT as a sugar cube, for example. Deviating
too far from that core shape can cause interoperability problems: see
accidentally-sending-friends-a-hairy-heart-emoji.
Direction (whether a person or object faces to the right or left, up
or down) should also be maintained where possible, because a change
in direction can change the meaning: when sending “crocodile shot by
police”, people expect any recipient to see the pistol pointing in
the same direction as when they composed it. Similarly, the U+1F6B6 pedestrian
should face to the left , not to the right.
See Section 2.10, Emoji Glyph Facing Direction.
General-purpose emoji for people and body parts should also not be
given overly specific images: the general recommendation is to be as
neutral as possible regarding race, ethnicity, and gender. Thus for
the character U+1F777 CONSTRUCTION WORKER, the
recommendation is to use a neutral graphic like
(with an orange skin tone)
instead of an overly specific image like
(with a light skin tone). This includes the
emoji modifier base characters
listed in
Sample Emoji Modifier Bases.
The emoji modifiers allow for variations in skin tone to
be expressed.
Unicode 9.0 adds several characters intended
to complete gender pairs, and there are ongoing efforts to provide
more gender choices in the future.
For more information, see Section 2.3, Gender.
Combining enclosing marks may be applied to emoji, just like they can be
applied to other characters. When that is done, the combination
should take on an emoji presentation. For example, a is represented as the sequence “1” plus an emoji presentation
selector plus U+20E3 COMBINING ENCLOSING KEYCAP.
The U+20E3 COMBINING ENCLOSING KEYCAP is the only such symbol that is currently in RGI emoji sequences.
Every emoji has a CLDR short name, which may change over time.
Every emoji character also has a formal Unicode name, like every other Unicode
character; this is a permanent identifier which cannot be changed.
The formal Unicode name of a Unicode character does not
determine its appearance. Formal names of symbols such as BLACK MEDIUM
SQUARE or WHITE MEDIUM SQUARE are not meant to indicate that the corresponding
character must be presented in black or white, respectively; rather, the use
of “black” and “white” in the names is generally just to contrast
filled versus outline shapes, or a darker
color fill versus a lighter color fill. Similarly, in other symbols such as
the hands U+261A BLACK LEFT POINTING INDEX and U+261C WHITE LEFT POINTING
INDEX, the words “white” and “black” also refer to outlined versus filled,
and do not indicate skin color.
However, other color words in the name, such as YELLOW,
typically provide a recommendation as to the emoji presentation,
which should be followed to avoid interoperability problems.
In many cases the consensus for the best depiction has evolved
in the time since the original formal name was standardized, and the preferred
depiction is now better reflected by the CLDR short name. For example,
U+1F483 DANCER should be designed in accordance with the CLDR short name
woman dancing (an additional character was added for man dancing).
In addition, only emoji characters have formal Unicode names; the emoji
sequences just have CLDR short names.
The formal Unicode name of each character must be unique, and
sometimes distinguishing words are included in the name to maintain that
uniqueness when two contrasting characters are added, such as:
🐶 U+1F436 DOG FACE
🐕 U+1F415 DOG
🐮 U+1F42E COW FACE 🐄 U+1F404 COW
In cases such as these, the images must also contrast. However,
in some cases additional terms like FACE were added to the name when they were
not needed for uniqueness. There is no requirement that an image contrast be
maintained where there are not contrasting emoji. Consider the following emoji:
🦌 U+1F98C DEER
🦓 U+1F993 ZEBRA FACE
Because there are no other contrasting DEER or ZEBRA emoji,
each of these two could be depicted with a face only, face and shoulders,
full body, or other choices.
Emoji characters may not always be displayed on a white
background. They are often best given a faint, narrow contrasting
border to keep the character visually distinct from a similarly
colored background. Thus a Japanese flag would have a border so that
it would be visible on a white background, and a Swiss flag have a
border so that it is visible on a red background.
Current practice is for emoji to have a square aspect ratio,
deriving from their origin in Japanese. For interoperability, it is
recommended that this practice be continued with current and future
emoji. They will typically have about the same vertical placement and advance
width as CJK ideographs. For example:
They should use transparency for proper display for selection and with colored
backgrounds:
The set of supported emoji sequences may vary by platform. For example,
take the following emoji ZWJ sequence:
On a particular platform, it can be shown as a single image:
However, if that combination is not supported as a single unit,
it may show up as a sequence like the following, and the user sees no indication
that it was meant to be composed into a single image:
Implementations could provide an indication of the composed nature
of an unsupported emoji sequence where possible. This gives users the additional
information that that sequence was intended to have a composed form. It also
explains why the sequence will not behave as separate elements: The arrow key
will not move between the flag and the skull & crossbones, and line breaks
will not occur between apparently separate emoji.
The following is an example of an approach that implementations can use. There are other approaches that could have a more intuitive appearance, but that could be difficult to implement with current text display mechanisms.
Display the ZWJ as a visible “glue” character, with zero or very narrow width.
The following human-form emoji are currently considered to have explicit
gender appearance based on the name and/or practice. They intentionally
contrast with other characters. This list may change in the future if new
explicit-gender characters are added, or if some of these are changed to be
gender-neutral. The names below are the CLDR short names,
followed by the formal Unicode name in capital letters if it differs.
The emoji in the table Emoji
Changed to Gender-Neutral in Emoji 13.0+ below have been removed from the
table Emoji With Explicit Gender Appearance,
and the CLDR names for most have been changed to use person (along with
some other changes). The person with veil and person in tuxedo
emoji also have RGI man and woman gender variants. The others do not; for
person in suit levitating and person with skullcap, the visual
distinctions would be unclear at emoji sizes.
It is often the case that gender is unknown or irrelevant, as in the usage
“Is there a doctor on the plane?,” or a gendered appearance may not be desired.
Such cases are known as “gender-neutral,” “gender-inclusive,”
“unspecified-gender,” or many other terms. Except for the emoji
shown in the table Emoji With Explicit Gender Appearance,
human-form emoji should normally be depicted in a gender-neutral way unless
gender appearance is explicitly specified using an
emoji ZWJ sequence in one of the ways shown
in the following table.
A human-form emoji can be given explicit gender using a ZWJ
sequence. The sequence contains the base emoji followed by ZWJ and either
FEMALE SIGN or MALE SIGN. The human-form emoji alone should be gender-neutral
in form.
A profession or role emoji can be formed using a ZWJ sequence.
The sequence starts with MAN or WOMAN followed by ZWJ and ending with an object.
The ADULT character can be used for a gender-neutral version.
Although the human-form emoji used in sign format type ZWJ
sequences are supposed to have gender-neutral appearance by themselves (when
not used in a sign format type ZWJ sequence), many
vendors previously depicted these human-form emoji as a
man or woman. As a result, they had
the same appearance as one of the sign format type ZWJ sequences.
For example, most vendors depicted
detective as man detective and person getting haircut
as woman getting haircut, but some vendors depicted
police officer as man police officer while others
depicted it as woman police officer.
Gender-neutral versions of the profession or role emoji using
object format type ZWJ sequences are promulgated by adding them to the
RGI emoji tag sequence set.
Emoji input systems such as keyboards or palettes typically
provide for input of some emoji whose appearance is explicitly gendered—for
example, emoji that appear specifically as a woman or man. When such emoji
are not included in the table
Emoji With Explicit Gender
Appearance, the input system should generate a sequence for
them that explicitly indicates the gendered appearance, rather than
relying on a particular system’s default appearance. This principle is shown
with the following example:
Assume on some system that the default appearance of
detective is as man detective. On that system, when entering
man detective, an input system should still use the explicit sequence
People all over the world want to have emoji that reflect more
human diversity, especially for skin tone. The Unicode emoji
characters for people and body parts are
intended to be generic and shown with a generic
(nonhuman) appearance, such as a yellow/orange color similar to that used for
smiley faces.
Five symbol modifier characters that provide for a range of skin
tones for human emoji were released in Unicode Version 8.0
(mid-2015). These characters are based on the six tones of the
Fitzpatrick scale, a recognized standard for dermatology (there are
many examples of this scale online, such as FitzpatrickSkinType.pdf).
The exact shades may vary between implementations.
These characters have been designed so that even where diverse
color images for human emoji are not available, readers can see the
intended meaning.
When used alone, the default representation of these modifier characters
is a color swatch. Whenever one of these characters immediately
follows certain characters (such as WOMAN), then a font should show
the sequence as a single glyph corresponding to the image for the
person(s) or body part with the specified skin tone, such as the
following:
+ →
However, even if the font doesn’t show the combined character,
the user can still see that a skin tone was intended:
This may fall back to a black and white stippled or hatched
image such as when colorful emoji are not supported.
+ →
When a human emoji is not immediately followed by an emoji
modifier character, it should use a generic, non-realistic skin
tone, such as RGB #FFCC22 (one of the
colors typically used for the smiley faces).
No particular hair color is required, however, dark hair is generally
regarded as more neutral because black or dark brown hair
is widespread among people of every skin tone. This does not apply to emoji that
already have an explicit hair color such as
PERSON WITH BLOND HAIR (originally added for compatibility
with Japanese mobile phone emoji), which needs to have blond hair
regardless of skin tone.
To have an effect on an emoji, an emoji modifier must immediately follow that
base emoji character.
Emoji presentation selectors are neither needed nor recommended for emoji
characters when they are followed by emoji modifiers, and should not be used
in newly generated emoji modifier sequences; the emoji modifier automatically
implies the emoji presentation style. See
ED-13. emoji modifier sequence.
However, some older data may include defective emoji modifier
sequences in which an emoji presentation selector does occur between the
base emoji character and the emoji modifier; this is the only exception
to the rule that an emoji modifier must immediately follow the character
that it modifies. In this case the emoji presentation selector should be
ignored. For handling text presentation selectors in sequences, see
Section 4, Presentation Style.
<U+270C VICTORY HAND, FE0F, TYPE-3>
Any other intervening character causes the emoji
modifier to appear as a free-standing character. Thus
Implementations can present the emoji modifiers as separate
characters in an input palette, or present the combined characters
using mechanisms such as long press.
The emoji modifiers are not intended for combination with
arbitrary emoji characters. Instead, they are restricted to the
emoji modifier base characters: no other characters are to be combined with
emoji modifiers. This set may change over time, with successive
versions of this document.
To find the exact list of emoji modifier
bases for each version, use the Emoji_Modifier_Base character
property, as described in Annex A: Emoji Properties and Data Files.
The following chart shows the expected display with emoji
modifiers, depending on the preceding character and the level of
support for the emoji modifier. The “Unsupported” rows show how the
character would typically appear on a system that does not have a
font with that character in it: with a missing glyph indicator.
In some circumstances, display of an emoji modifier
following an Emoji_Modifier_Base character should be suppressed:
If an emoji modifier base has no skin visible on a particular system,
then any following emoji modifier should be suppressed.
In other circumstances, display of an emoji modifier
following an Emoji_Modifier_Base character may be suppressed:
If a particular emoji modifier base uses a non-realistic
skin tone that differs from the default skin tone used for other Emoji_Modifier_Base
characters, then any following emoji modifier may be suppressed. For example,
suppose vampire is shown with gray skin in a particular implementation
while other Emoji_Modifier_Base characters are shown with neon yellow skin in the
absence of emoji modifiers; any emoji modifier following vampire may be
suppressed.
As noted above at the end of
Section 2.4, Diversity, emoji presentation selectors
are neither needed nor recommended for use in emoji modifier sequences. See
ED-13. emoji modifier sequence.
However, older data may include defective emoji modifier sequences which
do include emoji presentation selectors.
A supported emoji modifier sequence should be treated as a single
grapheme cluster for editing purposes (cursor moment, deletion,
and so on); word break, line break, and so on. For input, the composition of
that cluster does not need to be apparent to the user: it appears on
the screen as a single image. On a phone, for example, a long press
on a human figure can bring up a minipalette of different skin tones,
without the user having to separately find the human figure and then
the modifier. The following shows some possible appearances:
Of course, there are many other types of diversity in human
appearance besides different skin tones: Different hair styles and
color, use of eyeglasses, various kinds of facial hair, different
body shapes, different headwear, and so on. It is beyond the scope of
Unicode to provide an encoding-based mechanism for representing every
aspect of human appearance diversity that emoji users might want to
indicate. The best approach for communicating very specific human
images—or any type of image in which preservation of specific
appearance is very important—is the use of embedded graphics, as
described in Longer Term Solutions.
The U+200D ZERO WIDTH JOINER (ZWJ) can be used between the
elements of a sequence of characters to indicate that a single glyph
should be presented if available. An implementation may use this
mechanism to handle such an emoji ZWJ sequence as a single glyph,
with a palette or keyboard that generates the appropriate sequences
for the glyphs shown. To the user of such a system, these behave like
single emoji characters, even though internally they are sequences.
When an emoji ZWJ sequence is sent to a system that does not
have a corresponding single glyph, the ZWJ characters are
ignored and a fallback sequence of separate emoji is displayed.
Thus an emoji ZWJ sequence should only be defined and supported by
implementations where the fallback sequence would also make sense to
a recipient.
There are several emoji that depict more than one person interacting.
If these are to be implemented with a choice or genders or skin tones,
special handling may be required on a case-by-case basis. These emoji are
listed below:
There are some other emoji that would share the same gender and skin tone,
such as folded hands. As far as gender and skin tone are concerned, these behave just
like a single person and so need no special treatment. Other examples include:
For U+1F486 person getting massage, the
hands of the person providing the massage should be depicted
with no skin tone showing, perhaps in gloves.
For the following emoji and their skin-tone
variants, the infant should be depicted with no skin tone showing, perhaps
covered in a blanket, so that the emoji is treated as a single
person for purposes of skin tone modification:
The emoji for multi-person groupings have unspecified gender (unless
modified) with the exception of the three characters for people holding hands.
The handshake itself does not provide for gender differences.
Gender is applied to KISS, COUPLE WITH HEART, and FAMILY by using ZWJ
sequences with MAN, WOMAN, ADULT, BOY, GIRL, and CHILD.
The data files list the RGI versions of these, such as the following:
U+1F469 U+200D U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F48B U+200D U+1F468
kiss: woman, man
Gender is applied to people with bunny ears and people wrestling by using ZWJ sequences, as follows.
As with gender, skin tones can be applied to multi-person groupings
in a similar manner. Emoji represented internally by sequences may have skin
tone modifiers (Emoji_Modifier characters) added after each
of the characters that take them (those with
Emoji_Modifier_Base). This is illustrated by the table
Skin Tones for Multi-Person
Groupings Using Sequences below.
Multi-person sequences that mix people characters without skin tones and
people characters with skin tones should not be generated. That is, for
an input system, if one person character in a multi-person emoji sequence
has a skin tone modifier, then all people characters in that sequence should
have skin tone modifiers.
In Emoji 12.0, the Emoji_Modifier_Base property, emoji modifier sequences and
RGI
ZWJ sequences were updated to add 25 skin tone
combinations for woman and man holding hands, and 15 combinations each for women
holding hands, men holding hands, and people holding hands. These sequences
appear as 70 different images.
In Emoji 12.1, the RGI ZWJ sequences for women holding hands,
men holding hands, and people holding hands were further updated to add 10
more sequences each, so their sequences correspond to those for woman and man
holding hands. The new sequences are for people of different skin tones, but
with the darker skin tone later in the sequence instead of earlier. For example:
The only difference between the above sequences is that the inferred
positions of the medium-skin-tone man and the light-skin-tone man are swapped, left
and right.
Implementations can use the same image for both sequences. For the
multi-person emoji, implementations are not required to have different images for
people of the same gender depending solely on position. The choice of whether to
do so may depend on design considerations specific to particular vendor images.
Other multi-person groups with different skin tone combinations can be represented
as valid sequences, but are not yet RGI; adding mixed skin tones to families
would add 4,225 emoji sequences, for example.
Skin tone modifiers can be applied to each of the nine characters listed
in the table Multi-Person Groupings;
examples for some of these characters are illustrated in the following table.
This gives all of the people in the group the same skin tone, which is similar
to how the gender marker works.
However, in Emoji 15.0, such emoji modifier
sequences only have RGI status for six of the nine characters: kiss, couple with heart, woman and man
holding hands, men holding hands, women holding hands, and handshake.
fully-qualified emoji ZWJ
sequences should be handled appropriately in processing,
such as display, editing, segmentation, and so on.
minimally-qualified or
unqualified
emoji ZWJ sequences may be handled in the same way as their
fully-qualified forms; the choice is up to the implementation.
A text presentation selector applied to any element of an emoji ZWJ sequence
breaks that sequence, preventing it from displaying as a single image. The
partial sequences should
be displayed as separate images, each with presentation style as specified by any
presentation selectors present, or by default style for those emoji that do not
have any variation selectors.
The properties for tag characters U+E0020..U+E007F (TAG SPACE..CANCEL TAG)
have been modified for use in indicating variants or extensions of emoji characters.
For detailed information on handling TAG sequences correctly, see Annex C: Valid Emoji Tag Sequences.
Emoji Version 11.0 introduced hair components, which can be used in ZWJ sequences to
indicate hair colors or styles. The sequences recommended for general interchange (RGI)
are listed in the data files. The components include:
Red-haired (ginger)
Curly-haired
White-haired
Bald
There are hundreds of possible distinctions among hair colors and styles, but to limit
the number of combinations—and because emoji are presented with a “cartoon” style—there
is a small number of hair components. Note that the hair color blond has already been
provided for by an explicit blond man/woman/person emoji. Brown/black-haired are already
typical defaults for hair color in human-form emoji.
Nine large colored square emoji may be used in ZWJ sequences to
indicate that a base emoji should be displayed with that color if possible. The color
of the resulting image may not be exactly the same as the color square. The color
squares used for this purpose are:
U+2B1B BLACK LARGE SQUARE
U+2B1C WHITE LARGE SQUARE
U+1F7E5 LARGE RED SQUARE … U+1F7EB LARGE BROWN SQUARE
Where the implementation does not provide a single emoji image in that color, the user should see the
fallback appearance showing an indication of the desired color. Where color ZWJ
sequences are supported and the base emoji already has that color, the color square
should be ignored.
Emoji with glyphs that face to the right or left may face either direction, according to
vendor practice. However, that inconsistency can cause a change in meaning when exchanging
text across platforms. The following ZWJ mechanism can be used to explicitly indicate direction. If the base emoji image is not available facing in that direction, the user should see the fallback appearance showing an indication of the desired direction. If direction ZWJ sequences are supported and the base emoji already faces that direction, the direction emoji should be ignored.
There are different ways to count the emoji in Unicode, especially
because an emoji sequence may display as a single
emoji image. The following provides an overview of the ways to count
emoji; it can be (for example):
The count of code points that can be used in emoji, though this includes some code
points that are only used as part of sequences and don’t have emoji appearance by
themselves;
All sequences of one or more characters that can appear as a single glyph (which is
probably closer to what users think of as the number of emoji), though typically only a
subset of possible sequences are displayed as a single glyph on any platform, and some
sequences may be platform-specific extensions.
It is recommended that any font or keyboard whose goal is to support Unicode emoji
should support the characters and sequences listed in the [emoji-data]
data files. The best definition of the full set is in the emoji-test.txt file.
The Emoji
Counts, v15.0 chart provides more detail about the various counts as of
the current version of this specification. The various column
and row headers are described in
Emoji Counts Key.
The “Subtotal” row in the chart
indicates the count of what users typically think of as emoji. For example,
the 26 Regional Indicator (RI) code points are not included there; even though
they have Emoji status, they are typically only used in pairs to represent
flags.
Typical
keyboards may normally present even fewer emoji, since they may use
mechanisms like a long press to display modifier
sequences for specific emoji, and would thus not
simultaneously display all of the images associated with the chart rows that count
emoji with explicit skin tones.
Separate [emoji-charts] provide more information on many of these subsets and others, for example:
Emoji characters that were released most recently are listed in Emoji Recently Added.
Emoji candidates for a future version of Unicode are found in Emoji Candidates.
This capability was added in Unicode
6.1. Some systems may also provide this distinction with higher-level
markup, rather than variation sequences. For more information on these selectors,
see Emoji Presentation Sequences
[emoji-charts]. For details
regarding the use of emoji or text presentation selectors in emoji sequences
specifically, see Section 2.7, Emoji
Implementation Notes.
Implementations should support both styles of presentation for the
characters with emoji and text presentation sequences,
if possible. Most of these characters are emoji that were unified with
preexisting characters. Because people are now using emoji presentation for
a broader set of characters, Unicode 9.0 added emoji and text
presentation sequences for all emoji with default text presentation
(see discussion below). These are the characters shown in the column labeled
“Default Text Style; no VS in U8.0” in the Text
vs Emoji chart [emoji-charts].
However, even for cases in which the emoji
and text presentation selectors are available, it had
not been clear for implementers whether the default presentation for
pictographs should be emoji or text. That means that a piece of text
may show up in a different style than intended when shared across
platforms. While this is all perfectly legitimate for Unicode
characters—presentation style is never guaranteed—a shared
sense among developers of when to use emoji presentation by default
is important, so that there are fewer unexpected or jarring presentations.
Implementations need to know what the generally expected default presentation is,
to promote interoperability across platforms and applications.
There had been no clear line for implementers between three
categories of Unicode characters:
emoji-default: those expected to have an
emoji presentation by default, but can also have a text presentation
text-default: those expected to have a text
presentation by default, but could also have an emoji presentation
text-only: those that should only have a
text presentation
These categories can be distinguished using properties listed in Annex A: Emoji Properties and Data Files. The
first category are characters with Emoji=Yes and Emoji_Presentation=Yes.
The second category are characters with Emoji=Yes
and Emoji_Presentation=No. The third category are
characters with Emoji=No.
The presentation of a given emoji character depends on the
environment, whether or not there is an emoji or text presentation
selector, and the default presentation style (emoji versus text). In
informal environments like texting and chats, it is more appropriate
for most emoji characters to appear with a colorful emoji
presentation, and only get a text presentation with a text presentation
selector. Conversely, in formal environments such as word processing,
it is generally better for emoji characters to appear with a text
presentation, and only get the colorful emoji presentation with the
emoji presentation selector.
Based on those factors, here is typical presentation behavior.
However, these guidelines may change with changing user expectations.
Every emoji character with a
default text presentation allows for an emoji or text
presentation selector. Thus the presentation of these characters
can be controlled on a character-by-character basis. The characters that can
have these selectors applied to them
are listed in Emoji Variation Sequences
[emoji-charts].
In addition, the next two sections describe two other
mechanisms for globally controlling the emoji presentation: Using
language tags with locale extensions, or using special script codes.
Though these are new mechanisms and not yet widely supported, vendors
are encouraged to support the locale extension for most general usage
such as in browsers; the special script codes may be appropriate for
more specific usage such as OpenType font selection, or in APIs.
For more information, see [CLDR].
The locale extension “-em” can be used to specify desired
presentation for characters that may have both text-style and emoji-style
presentations available. There are three values that can be used, here
illustrated with “sr-Latn”:
Locale Code
Description
sr-Latn-u-em-emoji
use an emoji presentation for emoji characters where
possible
sr-Latn-u-em-text
use a text presentation for emoji characters where
possible
sr-Latn-u-em-default
use the default presentation (only needed to reset an
inherited -em setting).
This can be used in HTML, for example, with
<html lang="sr-Latn-u-em-emoji">.
Note that this approach does not have the disadvantages listed below
for the script-tag approach.
Other approaches for control of emoji presentation are also in use.
For example, in some CSS implementations, if any font in the lookup
list is an emoji font, then emoji presentation is used whenever possible.
Neither the Unicode code point order, nor the default
collation provided by the Unicode Collation Algorithm (DUCET), are
currently well suited for emoji, because they
separate conceptually-related characters. From the user's perspective, the
ordering in the following selection of characters sorted by DUCET appears
quite random, as illustrated by the following example:
The Emoji Ordering, v15.0
chart shows an ordering for emoji characters that groups them
together in a more natural fashion. This data has been incorporated
into [CLDR].
This ordering presents a cleaner and more expected
ordering for sorted lists of characters. The groupings include:
faces, people, body-parts, emotion, clothing, animals, plants, food,
places, transport, and so on. The ordering also groups more naturally
for the purpose of selection in input palettes. However, for sorting,
each character must occur in only one position, which is not a
restriction for input palettes. See Section 6, Input.
Emoji are not typically typed on a keyboard. Instead, they are
generally picked from a palette, or recognized via a dictionary. The
mobile keyboards typically have a button to select a palette
of emoji, such as in the left image below. Clicking on the
button reveals a palette, as in the right image.
The palettes need to be organized in a meaningful way for
users. They typically provide a small number of broad categories,
such as People, Nature, and so on. These categories typically have
100-200 emoji.
Many characters can be categorized in multiple ways: an orange
is both a plant and a food. Unlike a sort order, an input palette can
have multiple instances of a single character. It can thus extend the
sort ordering to add characters in any groupings where people might
reasonably be expected to look for them.
More advanced palettes will have long-press enabled, so that
people can press-and-hold on an emoji and have a set of related emoji
pop up. This allows for faster navigation, with less scrolling
through the palette.
Annotations for emoji characters are much more finely grained
keywords. They can be used for searching characters, and are often
easier than palettes for entering emoji characters. For example, when
someone types “hourglass” on their mobile phone, they could see and
pick from either of the matching emoji characters
or . That is often much easier than scrolling through
the palette and visually inspecting the screen. Input mechanisms may
also map emoticons to emoji as keyboard shortcuts: typing
:-) can result in .
In some input systems, a word or phrase bracketed by colons is used
to explicitly pick emoji characters. Thus typing in “I saw an :ambulance:”
is converted to “I saw an ”. For completeness,
such systems might support all of the full Unicode names, such as :first
quarter moon with face: for . Spaces within the phrase
may be represented by _, as in the following:
“my :alarm_clock: didn’t work”
→
“my didn’t work”.
However, in general the full Unicode names are not especially
suitable for that sort of use; they were designed to be unique
identifiers, and tend to be overly long or confusing.
For emoji that have gender and/or skin tone variants, input
systems should fully specify the intended appearance, rather than relying
on a particular system’s default appearance; see for example
Section 2.3.2, Marking Gender in Emoji
Input.
Searching includes both searching for emoji characters in queries,
and finding emoji characters in the target. These are most useful
when they include the annotations as synonyms or hints. For example,
when someone searches for on yelp.com,
they see matches for “gas station”. Conversely, searching for “gas
pump” in a search engine could find pages containing . Similarly, searching for “gas pump” in an email
program can bring up all the emails containing .
There is no requirement for uniqueness in both palette categories and
annotations: an emoji should show up wherever users would expect it.
A gas pump might show up under “object” and
“travel”; a heart under “heart” and
“emotion”, a under “animal”, “cat”, and “heart”.
Annotations are language-specific: searching on yelp.de,
someone would expect a search for to result in matches for “Tankstelle”. Thus
annotations need to be in multiple languages to be useful across
languages. They should also include regional annotations within a
given language, like “petrol station”, which people would expect
search for to result in on yelp.co.uk.
An English annotation cannot simply be translated into different
languages, because different words may have different associations in
different languages. The emoji
may be associated with Mexican or Southwestern restaurants in the US,
but not be associated with them in, say, Greece.
As noted in Section 2.1 Names,
there is one further kind of annotation, called a CLDR
short name. This is also referred to as the TTS name, for
use in text-to-speech processing
such as providing a short, descriptive emoji name when reading text
for accessibility purposes. In this case the CLDR names
provide several advantages over formal Unicode character names:
They can be shorter and less cumbersome than the formal
name, whose requirement for name uniqueness often
results in names that are overly long, such as
BLACK RIGHT-POINTING TRIANGLE WITH DOUBLE VERTICAL BAR for
.
They can apply to emoji that are represented by
sequences as well as those represented by single characters.
They can be updated to better reflect current emoji
depictions and usage.
The longer-term goal for implementations should be to support
embedded graphics, in addition to the emoji characters. Embedded
graphics allow arbitrary emoji symbols, and are not dependent on
additional Unicode encoding. Some examples of this are found in Skype
and LINE.
However, to be as effective and simple to use as emoji
characters, a full solution requires significant infrastructure
changes to allow simple, reliable input and transport of images
(stickers) in texting, chat, mobile phones, email programs, virtual
and mobile keyboards, and so on. (Even so, such images will never
interchange in environments that only support plain text, such as
email addresses.) Until that time, many implementations will need to
use Unicode emoji instead.
For example, mobile keyboards need to be enhanced. Enabling embedded
graphics would involve adding an additional custom mechanism for
users to add in their own graphics or purchase additional sets, such
as a sign to add an image to
the palette above. This would prompt the user to paste or otherwise
select a graphic, and add annotations for dictionary selection.
With such an enhanced mobile keyboard, the user could then
select those graphics in the same way as selecting the Unicode emoji.
If users started adding many custom graphics, the mobile keyboard
might even be enhanced to allow ordering or organization of those
graphics so that they can be quickly accessed. The extra graphics
would need to be disabled if the target of the mobile keyboard (such
as an email header line) would only accept text.
Other features required to make embedded graphics work well
include the ability of images to scale with font size, inclusion of
embedded images in more transport protocols, switching services and
applications to use protocols that do permit inclusion of embedded
images (for example, MMS versus SMS for text messages). There will always,
however, be places where embedded graphics cannot be used—such as
email headers, SMS messages, or file names. There are also privacy
aspects to implementations of embedded graphics: if the graphic
itself is not packaged with the text, but instead is just a reference
to an image on a server, then that server could track usage.
=Yes for characters used in
emoji sequences that normally do not appear on emoji keyboards as
separate choices, such as keycap base characters or Regional_Indicator characters.
All characters in emoji sequences are either Emoji
or Emoji_Component. Implementations must not,
however, assume that all Emoji_Component characters are also
Emoji. There are some non-emoji characters that are used in
various emoji sequences, such as tag characters and ZWJ.
Extended_Pictographic
ExtPict
=Yes for characters that are used to future-proof
segmentation. The Extended_Pictographic characters contain all the Emoji characters
except for some Emoji_Component characters.
If Emoji=No, then Emoji_Presentation=No,
Emoji_Modifier=No, and Emoji_Modifier_Base=No.
See [emoji-charts] for a collection of
charts that have been generated from the emoji data files and the related [CLDR]
emoji data (annotations and ordering). They are purely illustrative; the data to use for
implementation is in [emoji-data].
The data file comments and their structure are purely informative,
and may change across releases without notice. For version conventions used in the data files,
see Section 1.5.2, Versioning.
While the syntax of a well-formed emoji flag sequence is defined in ED-14,
only valid sequences are displayed as flags by conformant implementations, where:
The valid region sequences are specified by two-letter
Unicode
region subtags as defined in [CLDR], with
idStatus = “regular”, “deprecated”, or “macroregion”. For macroregions,
only UN and EU are valid.
Deprecated regions are included in the list of valid region
sequences so that deprecations in the future do not invalidate previously valid emoji flag sequences. RGI emoji flag sequences with deprecated regions are recommended for support.
Non-RGI emoji flag sequences with deprecated regions should not be
generated.
Macroregion region
sequences generally do not have official flags, with the exception of UN and EU.
Some region sequences represent countries (as recognized by the United
Nations, for example); others represent territories that are
associated with a country. Such territories may have flags of their own,
or may use the flag of the country with which they are associated. Depictions
of images for flags may be subject to constraints by the administration of
that region.
Caveats:
Although a pair of REGIONAL INDICATOR symbols is referred to as an
emoji_flag_sequence, it really represents a specific region, not a
specific flag for that region. The actual flag displayed for the pair may be
different on different platforms, for example for territories which do
not have an official flag. The displayed flag may change over time as
regions change their flags and platforms update their software.
For some territories (especially those without separate official flags),
the displayed flag may be the same as the flag for the country
with which they are associated. For more about cases where characters
have the same appearance, see UTR #36: Unicode Security
Considerations [UTR36].
For additional information see the sub-section on Regional Indicator Symbols
in Section 22.10, Enclosed and Square of
[Unicode].
Emoji are generally presented with a square aspect ratio, which
presents a problem for flags. The flag for Qatar
is over 150% wider than tall; for Switzerland
it is square; for Nepal it is over 20% taller
than wide. To avoid a ransom-note effect, implementations may want to
use a fixed ratio across all flags, such as 150%, with a blank band
on the top and bottom. (The average width for flags is between 150%
and 165%.)
Presentation as a waving flag, or clipping to a
circle, can help to present a uniform appearance, masking the aspect
differences.
Flags should have a visible edge. One option is to use a one-pixel gray
line chosen to be contrasting with the adjacent field color.
For an open-source set of flag images (png and svg), see region-flags.
Options for presenting an emoji_flag_sequence for which
a system does not have a specific flag or other glyph include:
Display each REGIONAL INDICATOR symbol separately as a letter in a
dotted square, as shown in the Unicode charts. This provides
information about the specific region indicated, but may be mystifying
to some users.
For all unsupported REGIONAL INDICATOR pairs, display the same
missing flag glyph, such as the image shown below.
This would indicate that the supported pair was intended to represent
the flag of some region, without indicating which one.
The code point order of flags is by region code, which will not be
intuitive for users, because that rarely matches the order of
countries in the user’s language. English speakers are surprised
that the flag for Germany comes before the flag for Djibouti. An
alternative is to present the sorted order according to the localized
country name, using [CLDR] data.
While the syntax of a well-formed emoji tag sequence is defined in
ED-14a, not
all possible tag sequences are valid. The only valid sequences in this version
of Unicode Emoji are defined by sections in this annex, which specify valid
combinations of <tag_base> characters and
<tag_spec> sequences and their expected presentation. Conformant implementations only
display valid sequences as emoji, and display invalid sequences with a special presentation to show that they are invalid, such as in the examples below.
There is one common constraint on valid emoji tag sequences:
the entire emoji_tag_sequence, including tag_base and tag_end, must not be
longer than 32 code points. This provides a practical limit needed by
many rendering systems, and is consistent with the 32-code-point buffer limit
specified for the Stream-Safe Text Format as defined in
UAX #15: Unicode Normalization Forms [UAX15].
If a platform supports tag sequences, but a particular emoji tag sequence is invalid
or cannot be displayed, then to reduce spoofing risk that emoji tag sequence should be
displayed using a missing emoji glyph if feasible. The following are examples,
where the tag_base character is a black flag.
Sample images
Condition
The implementation supports tag sequences, but this particular sequence is either not supported or simply invalid. (If the font technology permits, the missing emoji glyph can be overlaid on the tag_base character, thus occupying the same physical dimensions as if the sequence were supported.)
The implementation does not support tag sequences at all. (The tag characters are normally invisible, and thus only the base character displays.)
In examples in this section, underlined ASCII characters represent
the corresponding tag characters, while ✦ represents the tag_end.
SD must have CLDR idStatus = “regular”, “deprecated”, or “macroregion”.
Notes:
Deprecated SD values are included in the list of valid region
sequences so that deprecations in the future do not invalidate previously valid emoji tag sequences. RGI emoji tag sequences with deprecated SD values are recommended for support.
Non-RGI emoji tag sequences with deprecated SD values should not be generated.
There is no hyphen in the tag_spec, unlike ISO subdivisions like “GB-SCT”.
These flag emoji tag sequences are used to request an image for whatever is currently the flag of the specified subregion. Like the emoji flag sequences, they are not intended to provide a mechanism for versioned representations of any particular flag image.
Specific platforms and programs decide which emoji extended flag sequences they will support. There is no requirement that any be supported, and no expectation that more than a small number be commonly supported by vendors.
A completely tag-unaware implementation will display any sequence of tag characters as invisible, without any effect on adjacent characters. The following sections apply to conformant implementations that support at least one tag sequence.
An implementation may support emoji tag sequences, but not support a particular valid emoji tag sequence.
Images for unsupported valid emoji tag sequences must indicate that the sequence image is missing, by showing the base glyph with either a following “missing emoji glyph” or with an overlay “missing” glyph. The overlay glyph approach is recommended, so that the sequence would have the same width as if supported. A tag-unaware implementation (TU) will show just the base character.
Images for invalid (but well-formed) emoji tag sequences must not be interpreted as if they were regular emoji tag sequences for a different appearance. They must instead indicate that there is something wrong with the sequence. The recommended approach is to also show the base glyph with either a following “missing emoji glyph” or with an overlay “missing” glyph.