Emoji support for project notes

Question

Two consultants have recently wished for the ability to use emojis in project notes, since people are used to using them in text messages. I discovered the other day that some Emojis are in the Unicode standard and so they can be entered in Paratext if you know the Unicode value or set up an autocorrect file.

The emojis are outside the Basic MultiLingual Plane (BMP) of Unicode, so they have more than four digits in their code, which requires you to type 8 digits (use leading 0s) for ALT-X. For an autocorrect, you have to enter what is called the surrogate pair, which is two special 4 digit Unicode values.

Some examples:
The emoji

has a Unicode value of: 1f600
The surrogate pair code in autocorrect is: \uD83D\uDE00

The emoji

has a Unicode value of:1f44d
The surrogate code pair is \uD83D\uDC4D

The emoji

has a Unicode value of: 1f606
The surrogate code pair is \uD83D\uDE06

A sample Autocorrect file:
:)–>\uD83D\uDE00
^t–>\uD83D\uDC4D
^)–>\uD83D\uDE06

The full chart of Unicode emojis:

https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#1f606

Use this page to calculate the surrogate pair codes for an autocorrect file
http://russellcottrell.com/greek/utilities/SurrogatePairCalculator.htm
(add \u before each code in the Autocorrect file)

Answer 1

Even better, you can just use the Emoji keyboard built into Windows!

1. Press the Windows key + . (that’s the period / fullstop key)
2. Choose the emoji(s) that you want

image904×634 94.5 KB

This includes a history tab (to see your most recently used emojis):

As well as category tabs for various categories of emojis:

Have fun expressing yourself!

Comments

You can also use the Search feature in the Windows emoji keyboard:

1. In a Project Note, open the Emoji keyboard (Windows + .)
2. Click the Search icon (#1 below)
3. Type the emoji you are searching for (#2)
4. Click the emoji you want to insert (#3)

image925×536 82.9 KB

Answer 2

Thanks. Great tip, I’m going to be using Windows-. for emojis.

Comments

Answer 3

I have been encouraging all of my CiTs to occasionally use emojis to help avoid making our notes sound aggressive or demanding. For what it is worth, since the emojis are unicode, you can also search for them in Paratext so it is another way of tagging notes for future reference. I haven’t had any translation teams want to put them into their biblical text yet, but the day might be coming.

Comments

Food for thought.