New emoji for 2020: Extinct animals, smiling tears and transgender representation among new additions
New gender inclusive options include a man with a moustache wearing a wedding veil
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Your support makes all the difference.The Unicode Consortium has unveiled 117 new emoji for 2020, which will roll out on TikTok, WhatsApp and other platforms later this year.
The additions are comprised of 62 new images and 55 new gender and skin tone variants, with extinct animals and transgender symbols among the notable inclusions.
A "smiling face with tear" and a "disguised face" are the only new additions to the most popular Smileys and Emotion category.
Each emoji will vary slightly in appearance, depending on which platform or device it is used on, but will share the same key features. The Unicode Consortium is made up of all the major platforms, who approve the emoji and then add their own designs to their own platforms.
"The new emoji start showing up on mobile phones in September/October – some platforms may release them earlier," Unicode wrote in a blog post announcing the new emoji.
New emoji characters pass through a long submission process before they are accepted and adopted by the Unicode Consortium.
Anyone can submit a proposal but all submissions must meet certain technical and cultural criteria before they are considered.
The proposal for the transgender flag emoji was sponsored by Google and Microsoft and was made due to a lack of options to represent the transgender community.
"We can see national flags, professions, skin tones and gender modifiers are all used to represent personal identity. The current emoji offering does not allow for the expression of transgender identity," the proposal stated.
"We believe that given the transgender flag represents not only community affiliation but also an important role in personal identity [it] is integral to diversifying the options available: filling a significant gap and providing a more inclusive experience for all."
Other gender inclusive options on the list of new emoji include an all-gender "person in veil", "person in tuxedo" and "person feeding baby with a bottle", which were previously limited to one gender.
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