Shady Characters

This is the most recent in a series of fourteen posts on Emoji (😂). Start at PART 1 or view ALL POSTS in the series.

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I have made a thing! Head over to emoji.shadycharacters.co.uk to peruse the Shady Characters Periodic Table of Emoji.

What do I mean by a periodic table of emoji? Well, I answer that question in some detail in the notes under the table itself, but briefly, I wanted to see if I could use a table to tell us something about how emoji are perceived. Which emoji are positive? Which are negative? Which ones convey sentiments that match their appearances, and which deviate from them?

As such, I borrowed the basic principles behind the periodic table of the elements — that is, arrange items in rows and columns according to their properties — and applied them to emoji instead. In the chemical table, elements are arranged in columns according to the number of electrons in their outer shells and in rows according to their total number of electron shells. In my table, emoji are placed in rows according to their category (which are then sorted according to popularity) and from left to right according to how positive or negative they are.

If you’d like to learn more, there’s much more to be read about how I built and arranged the table over at the other site.

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Wait, I hear you say, wasn’t there already a periodic table of emoji? Yes, there is. It’s this one here, which depicts a collection of “sinister emoji” that are apparently used as codes for various kinds of drugs, violence, sexual practices, extremism and other such things. It went lightly viral in parenting circles a few months back.

To be pedantic (and hey, this is a punctuation blog at heart, even if I urge you not to be too prescriptive about it), this other table is a periodic table in shape only. While the emoji in each column are related to one another, the arrangement of the rows appears to be more or less arbitrary. Speaking personally, moreover, I find it quite difficult to worry overmuch about the use of emoji as code words for drugs or other such things — as I write in Face with Tears of Joy,* it’s hard to blame emoji for being used in nefarious ways, or human beings for using them that way. It’s a bit like blaming words for having meanings.

All that said, I hope that there’s room for another periodic table of emoji. One that, I hope, can show emoji in a more positive light. (And a neutral one, and a negative one!) Head to emoji.shadycharacters.co.uk to take a look at the table yourself, and let me know what you think in the comments!

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