The use of laughter acronyms and emojis in our writing hints that laughter itself may be best understood as a means of conveying important, socially relevant information.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is an emoji worth? Surprisingly, it’s likely worth more than you think. A smiley face is simply a smiley face, right? Alas, it’s not anymore. At this point ...

We might not have realised it, but emojis have given us a powerful shorthand emotional vocabulary – even if most of us are cry-laughing 20% of the time Linguists, and perhaps everyone else, started ...