How to make emojis on a computer keyboard in windows 10
Emoji is a small graphic (icon) that is used to represent emotion, objects, and symbols. Emojis can be static or animated images. They are most common in smartphones application. However, most people don’t know that even the computer keyboard offers ways of creating emojis. The term is adopted from Japanese meaning picture character.
To activate the emoji keyboard you can use the shortcut windows key+. or window key+ ;. A touch keyboard can also be used to activate the emoji and emoticon. Emoji’s main advantages are used to communicate emotions using a graphical representation.
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Difference between emojis and emoticons
While emojis are graphical icons, emoticons are text-generated graphics that also represent emotion. Emoticon means emotional icons. Emoticons are predecessors of emojis and are still in use. The most common emoticon is the use of 🙂 for smiling face.
Advantages of emojis
- They can be used to express emotions more than words can describe
- They can be used to water down a communicated point when you don’t want the other person to take it seriously.
- They save time instead of typing a lot of text.
Disadvantages of emojis
- They should not be used for official communication.
- Overuse of emojis in communication makes one look needy.
- They may appear different depending on the types of hardware they are displayed on.
- Emojis may be misinterpreted.
How to make emojis on a computer keyboard
Finding emojis on your smartphone application is very easy since they are in most applications including when sending a normal text message. What is not common to most people is how to add emojis on your desktop computer or laptop. When using the windows 10 operating system there are 2 ways that you can activate the emoji keyboard.
2 ways to activate the emoji keyboard on windows 10
Using a keyboard shortcut key to activate the emoji keyboard
To activate the keyboard use the Window key + . OR Window key +;
When you use any of the two shortcuts you will be presented with a keyboard as shown below.
The keyboard offers 3 types of objects that you can add, emoji, kaomoji, and symbols. To insert any, choose your preferred emoji to add. Kaomoji is a Japanese emoticon that uses there characters to create emotional icons representation.
Example 😂emoji, ಥ_ಥkaomoji, and ௹sysmbol.
Using the touch keyboard to activate the emoji keyboard
To use the touch keyboard you first need to activate it on the taskbar. To activate right click on the part of the taskbar and ensure the “show touch keyboard button” as shown below is ticked.
After activating the touch keyboard the keyboard icon will appear near the date and time of your computer on the taskbar. Click on it to activate the keyboard. You will be presented with a keyboard with options where you can key in emojis and other icons that you cannot find on a standard keyboard.
11 common emoticons that you can create using your computer keyboard.
To create the emoticon you can open any word processor or any others type of text editor and try the following characters to test the emoticon.
| Characters or symbols | Emotion represented |
| 🙂 | Smile |
| =) | Happy |
| 🙁 | Frowning |
| 😀 | Greetings |
| ;P | Acting cute |
| >:( | Angry |
| :-O | Surprised |
| 8) | Cool face |
| :-/ | Sick face |
| :`-( | Crying face |
| (*_*) | In love |
How to use emojis to search on major search engines?
Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Duckduckgo allows user to enter any emoji as the key graphic for search. To search using emojis first activate the touch keyboard as explained above. Select the preferred emoji and search the normal way you do any other search.
