Your Spiritual Emoji

Some people who evidently have nothing better to do have created their own personal online emojis or avatars with the help of an app called Bitmoji.

If you've been around long enough, you might remember the yellow "smiley face" that seemed to be everywhere from buttons to bumper stickers in the 1970s. The origin of the smiley face as we know it dates from a few years earlier (1963) when an insurance company contracted with artist Harvey Ball to develop a happy face symbol to raise the morale of its employees.

We're not sure if it actually did raise their morale (our guess is that raises would be more likely to put smiles on their faces), but we do know that the smiley face has taken on a new role in the digital age as a way of conveying emotion when sending text messages.

Enter the "emoji," which has become shorthand for expressing the spirit of a cold, hard text message. Using a "winky face," for example, means that the text should be taken more tongue-in-cheek, or a gritted-teeth face might convey anger or anxiety. Using an emoji can help the text be taken in the right context by the reader, which is important in a world where...