It was once dubbed "penmanship for illiterates" but emojis - the little symbols used to punctuate digital communications - have become so mainstream that 92 per cent of the world's 3.2 billion internet users admit to using them. Emojis have even been cited - successfully - in courtrooms from Israel to France as evidence of intent.
These icons range from the expressive - yellow cartoonish faces crying with laughter, looking angry, happy, sad and so on - to the figurative - a dancing lady in a red dress; hands clasped in prayer; an avocado; a pizza slice - to the scatological - see the smiling pile of excrement emoji for further elucidation. Now numbering more than 2600, they have become an essential part of modern discourse.
Their use is even spilling over into the workplace since they were loaded on to Apple users' desktops in 2011. One American study found that 76 per cent of respondents had sent the symbols to a colleague in a work email. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel warn this week that work users should proceed with caution, however, as "smileys ... decrease perceptions of competence".
Not so, says the world's first "emoji translator". Keith Broni, 27, was appointed by consultancy firm Today Translations this year to iron out businesses' use of Unicode's pictorial language. When companies are unsure as to whether communications containing a winking face emoji will come off as cheeky, or just charmless, they give Broni a call. "You don't want to try to use the power of emoji and have it backfire," he says. "In interpersonal communications, [using them incorrectly] can be confusing or even contradictory."
For brands hoping the images will make them look relevant, failure to strike the right note "will look amateurish" and "like a corporate cash-in".