The text characters used to make bold, italic, and cursive text styles (and more!) on YayText were not created to help people make their social media posts stand out, or to make their usernames look cool and unique. Each of the characters in the word 𝐰ℎ𝒊𝗉𝗽𝘦𝙧𝓈𝓷𝔞𝖕𝚙𝕖𝐫 was actually made to be used in mathematical notation. These letters all come from the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols…

This article will explore the unique role that text plays in vaporwave music and art. Why do vaporwave tracks, albums, and artist names use stretched out ｆｕｌｌｗｉｄｔｈ text, Japanese writing 変, and 𐒖Ƭᖇ𝚫ƝǤⵟ looking Unicode characters? Why are track titles sometimes formatted to look like FILENAME.AVI or Muzak Corp™ Song Title?

Analyzing the text characters that accompany vaporwave can help us understand vaporwave a whole. How so? In her book "Because Internet", linguist Gretchen McCulloch compares the challenges of analyzing speech at scale, with the ease of analyzing internet writing. Speech requires time and resources to decipher and process. Internet language, on the other hand, is easier to work with. Because text on the internet is public and digitized, McCulloch says it…

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has changed everything, including how we use emojis! Their meanings have changed as coronavirus continues to leave its mark. Below are some emojis that have taken on a new meaning since the beginning of the pandemic.

Face vomiting 🤮

Pre-covid, the face vomiting emoji emoji was typically used to display distaste or outright disgust. For example "Brandon is trying to…

Hello and Happy World Panda Day! Here are a few emojis to help you celebrate! 🥳🐼

🇨🇳⛰️ Chinese mountains

Today, wild pandas live in bamboo forests located high in the mountains of southwestern China. The flag of China emoji and mountain emoji represent the panda's natural habitat. While pandas can be found in zoos and reserves all over the world, these mountains are their home.

🐼 Panda!

Let's get a little obvious here. This is the panda emoji. It depicts the panda's cute and unique facial features. If you want to…

After you've finished staring at your pearly whites in the mirror, and have scheduled your next dentist's appointment, it's time to celebrate National Dentist's Day with some emojis. What better way to show your dentist how much you cherish and appreciate them, then to text them your favorite dental emojis? If you're not able to celebrate by sharing these emojis with your dentist this year, don't…