The best way of expressing emotions is emoji icons. So, learn how to make emoticons in text messages on iPhone.
Gone are the days when a simple colon and a set of parenthesis would be enough to convey our thoughts symbolically. Now, if you use such symbols you are going to be thought of as old and archaic. To confound the problem, now there are different smartphones with different operating systems. This make sending an icon seem like a herculean task. So, in this article let me focus only on iPhone.
As iPhone users know iMessage is a text messaging application developed by apple for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. It was first introduced in iOS (Apple’s mobile operating system) version 5. So, if you have a wifi connection then you can send countless text messages to other iOS users. And adding icons or emoticons as they are called will add more spice to your messages.
To make use of these icons you have to have an Emoji keyboard. You might ask, what the heck is an Emoji keyboard? According to Wikipedia Emoji is a combination of “e” and “moji “which is Japanese for picture and letter respectively. This was developed by the Japanese and was only available in Japan but as their popularity spread, the makers of smartphones also incorporated it.
This is how you can add the Emoji keyboard.
- Go to settings
- Select keyboard
- From that select international keyboard
- Next select add new keyboard
- From the list select Emoji
- Close Settings
- Reboot the phone
When you are actually typing a message, you can toggle between your standard keyboard and the Emoji keyboard. On the standard keyboard you can see a globe icon, click on that to view the Emoji keyboard. Similarly click on the globe icon on the Emoji keyboard to view the standard keyboard.
This is the simplest way to include icons in your text messages but there are other ways to. For instance you can buy Emoji emoticons from iTunes and then follow the steps above. This way you can get more emoticons than the standard method. You can also download free apps which provide emoticons.
Now if you want to add the emoticons to your message here is the step by step approach to do it.
- Open Messages
- Click or rather tap on the new message icon. It appears on the upper right hand corner- the one showing a pencil resting on paper.
- Select the recipient or type in the number or name.
- Come to the text field.
- If you want to add emoticons then tap on the globe icon which appears on the lower left screen.
- There are different menus which you can see on the bottom of the screen.
- Once you select the emoticon just tap on it to insert it.
- Send the message.
If you feel that this is too much work then you can always ask Siri(on newer phones) to do it for you. So when writing a text message you can just ask Siri to insert “Smiley face” or “Winkey face”. Siri will understand even if you just use “Smiley” or “winkey”. Other than this the iMessage app automatically inserts emoticons depending on the keystroke. So, if you type”:-)” then it automatically insert “”.
If you are sending messages to a phone other than iPhone then that phone should also have the Emoji keyboard installed for it to receive the message properly.
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