By Euronews
Published on
Watch Euronews' Emma Beswick explain the history of emoticons and emojis.
The fun icons people use in their digital communications have a celebratory day.
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World Emoji Day is held on July 17 because Apple's calendar icon emoji shows the date of July 17.
Emoji award winners for categories such as most anticipated emoji and best new emoji will be announced.
Emojis come from emoticons — facial expressions made with punctuation marks — which were first used on digital messaging boards to help people to clarify the tone of a message.
A Japanese engineer created emojis in 1998.
Watch Euronews' Emma Beswick explain the fun history of emojis in the video player above.