The pictorial shorthand of emojis is perfect for small phone screens. It has also sprawled into a lexicon rich in metaphor and humor.

Today there are north of 3,500 accepted emoji characters. They appear in politics, movies, texts, our sex lives, and more. But emoji’s impact has never been explored in full. Keith Houston follows ...

Face with Tears of Joy Keith Houston (W. W. Norton) If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what of emoji, that ever-increasingly important part of our lexicon?