Interview with ABC Radio Sydney – emojis at work

Interview transcript

Monday 2 September 2024

00:00:00 James Valentine

Coming up to 14 minutes after 1. Very good afternoon, I’m James Valentine. I don’t mind an emoji. I’m not a big user of the emoji in my communications. For a while, I tried a random emoji approach, but it just seemed to annoy people. By this, I would say, ‘OK, I’ll be home for dinner’, and then I’d put the dragon or just some of those symbols that I didn’t even understand.

00:00:23 James Valentine

And it really just annoyed people. So I think that’s bad. I don’t like to annoy people when I’m communicating that doesn’t seem to have much, much result. But I don’t mind if other people use them. I’m perfectly happy. You know, like I think it’s really interesting that we’ve now got this whole other means of communication, this other whole language, which is linking us back to the Egyptians, really.

00:00:44 James Valentine

We’ve gone from, you know, hieroglyphics all the way through to symbols for sounds, all the way back to high. I wanna say hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics. I think it’s better. And you know it’s sort of fascinating that it’s there.

00:00:59 James Valentine

You use them with your friends, but can you use them at work? Have you done this? Have you tried anything in sort of a professional capacity, and you’ve put an emoji in, and it didn’t go well?

00:01:10 James Valentine

Or it did let me know. Our number is 0467 922 702. Can I say if you text me, I can’t actually see the emojis. They don’t come on our service. They don’t come up, so don’t try to use emojis in a witty way. I won’t be able to see them. You can call direct 1300 222 702.

00:01:30 James Valentine

Emily Halloran is editor at the Plain English Foundation and was writing about this in their journal. Hello, Emily.

00:01:36 Emily Halloran

Hi, James.

00:01:37 James Valentine

Is do. Do you have a rule? You know the poo symbol in a business email is probably not a good idea.

00:01:45 Emily Halloran

Probably not, but maybe you could put a smiley face and the poo symbol.

00:01:50 James Valentine

Does the smiley face? Does that? You know, I suppose.

00.01.57 Emily Halloran

It does soften it.

00.01.58 James Valentine

Do you think it’s up to the person that the personality of the person?

00:02:00 Emily Halloran

Oh, absolutely. You have to know who you’re writing to know whether an emoji is going to play well.

00:02:05 James Valentine

Yeah, yeah. And you’d have to have any. Yeah, you would assume that you know the relationship.

00:02:14 Emily Halloran

You would absolutely, and I mean, even if you do know the relationship, you do have to tread carefully. Like if we think about Gen Z writers, I’ve heard that they’re not the biggest fan of the thumbs up reaction. They find it a bit passive aggressive or dismissive they. So maybe we need to …

00:02:29 James Valentine

Ohh.

00:02:31 Emily Halloran

Think carefully about how emerging use is changing over time.

00:02:35 James Valentine

That’s so interesting, isn’t it? Yes, because generationally, there may be. It’ll be interpreted differently. This is this is like the interpretation of a full stop and not a full stop. Right?

00:02:46 Emily Halloran

Exactly, exactly. And do you know why that is different from generation to generation?

00:02:51 James Valentine

Tell me.

00:02:53 Emily Halloran

So, when people were first growing up using phones, it was a text and you had to pay per text. So, what we would do is we would cram everything into one text, and we would put an ellipsis in to separate our ideas. Now don’t have to pay.

00:03:07 James Valentine

Yeah.

00:03:09 Emily Halloran

Per text so, people will often leave a full stop off and just send the message, and that’s the end of your sentence.

00:03:15 James Valentine

Yeah, right.

00:03:16 Emily Halloran

And so, when you punctuate that does with the full stop – it sort of does create a little bit of a tone to your message that …

00:03:24 James Valentine

This is what this is. What’s so interesting? Is it like some? And, you know, younger readers will read the text with a full stop and see the sort of an OK with a full stop seems aggressive.

00:03:24 Emily Halloran

You’ve gone through.

00:03:36 Emily Halloran

Absolutely.

00:03:38 James Valentine

It’s funny, isn’t it? Whereas I’m. I go, ‘Alright, I’ll see you at 3.’ Full stop and think that I’ve said that. That’s a sentence, so I need to put a full stop. I’m not. There’s no tone to the full stop.

00:03:49 Emily Halloran

Well, I mean you could put an emoji at the end. I’m on my way and then a symbol.

00:03:54 James Valentine

See again, I. Well, that’s what I mean by I’m not opposed to the emoji, but I feel if I’m sending them, it’s kind of like I’m not an emoji guy, really. You know, like I it’s that’s I mean I there’s no sarcasm in emojis, so they don’t quite work for me.

00:04:12 Emily Halloran

I see that is tricky, I mean.

00:04:14 James Valentine

You know what, I.

00:04:16 Emily Halloran

They do what they say on the tin. I guess you can always find a sarcasm emoji face for yourself. We’re always creating new emojis. There’s a company that creates new ones. You can apply to have a custom emoji made for you.

00:04:21 James Valentine

The sarcasm face is the same as Comic Sans, you know, like no. If you have to use a sarcasm face, that’s not gonna work. It’s.

So if you’ve tried to use the emoji, perhaps in a in any kind of professional communication, let me know how it’s gone. Our text line is 0467 922 702. You can call us on 1300, 222 702. And Emily’s bringing up another interesting area where the text, email, emoji, punctuation is kind of misinterpreted or according to you it’s misinterpreted. People interpret it differently and often that’s generational if you experience this, use the same numbers 0467 922 702 or call direct to 1300 222 702.

00:05:15 James Valentine

Naomi?

00:05:20 Naomi

Yes, my well, well on the work front, I use Outlook for work, and now if I receive an email, I’ve got the option to respond with an emoticon at the top of the email.

00:05:33 James Valentine

Right. OK.

00:05:33 Naomi

So yeah. But I was calling to say my mum regularly will respond in group chats with a random unicorn. She doesn’t. She doesn’t know how it happens. It’s rarely at an opportune time that she sends a dancing unicorn, but it’s become a little bit of a joke.

00:05:53 James Valentine

So your dearest uncle has been taken gravely ill: dance, dancing unicorn?

00:05:57 Naomi

Yeah.

00:05:59 Naomi

It’s time for a dancing unicorn, according to her phone. And so, it just makes me laugh every time. Not what it’s supposed to.

00:06:01 James Valentine

It right.

00:06:07 James Valentine

Yeah, my God.

00:06:10 James Valentine

Well, maybe that that’s quite good. Maybe that’s the. That’s the great fun. Sorry, were you saying, when you said in your work emails there is a that you can use emoji there?

00:06:19 Naomi

In Outlook, there’s now an option for inter-office. If I receive an email from someone, I can kind of, instead of replying to the email, I can either give it a thumbs up, a heart or a smiley face.

00:06:33 James Valentine

Right, right. And.

00:06:35 Naomi

So I do that occasionally because it’s just easier and get to the point across without having to write a big thing. They can get the vibe.

00:06:41 James Valentine

Yeah. And do you and do you do you figure out this person will appreciate the thumbs up, this person won’t.

00:06:49 Naomi

I generally do it within my immediate team that I work with because I understand, yeah, how they would appreciate that, but I wouldn’t send a thumbs up to the CEO.

00:06:59 James Valentine

Yeah. Yeah, exactly that that might that I, I would probably be the same.

00:07:02 Naomi

Wrong tone, yeah.

00:07:03 James Valentine

If Kim Williams got in touch, for example, chair of the ABC and said, you know, James like to talk about a few matters’, I wouldn’t send a thumbs up.

00:07:11 Naomi

Or a laughing emoticon.

00:07:13 James Valentine

Or a laughing emoticon, or you know, green face vomit. You know, I probably wouldn’t do that. That would be bad.

00:07:19 Naomi

Correct

00:07:21 James Valentine

I don’t think that would go well.

What do you, when do you use them? Have you got it wrong? Have you been in that moment where people go, where people … you know you’ve used almost, you’ve used what is considered standard language and often people’ve said, yeah, you’re a little bit aggressive in that. That’s, it’s a funny one, isn’t it? Like some of those sort of standard punctuations seem to come across as quite aggressive now.

00:07:43 James Valentine

Should it ever be done or is it like anything else? Once they’ve been around for 10 years, it starts to become a little more standard – people start to use them. Emily, you’re suggesting that there could be some legal problems with this.

00:08:01 Emily Halloran

Absolutely. So in Canada recently, we had a judge that ruled in favour of a thumbs up being legally binding, and this was basically because the person replied very tersely to messages, usually, so they would reply with ‘yep’ or ‘yes’, and kind of give assent to a contract, and so they gave a thumbs up which to them said ‘I’ve read your message’, but to the person who was sending him the contract came across as ‘I’m signing the contract’.

00:08:30 Emily Halloran

So unfortunately, that man lost and had to pay $92,000 to make up for that thumbs up. An expensive one.

00:08:35 James Valentine

Wow.

00:08:38 James Valentine

Isn’t that interesting? So the judge said, and the judge is that interesting? The judge took the character of communication, the person who sent the thumbs up usually did just do a sort of casual ‘yep’, or ‘sure, no worries’.

00:08:52 Emily Halloran

Exactly, exactly. So, I mean, I guess it’s the history of how you communicate if you use curt words, then thumbs up is considered a curt word.

00:09:02 James Valentine

A curt word. Wow. See, I would have thought … isn’t that interesting. I would have thought there’d be a reasonable argument for saying, ‘no, I was just indicating that I’ve got it, that I’ve read it’. You know, if it’s contractually [sic], you would need more than that.

00:09:18 Emily Halloran

I mean, perhaps here in Australia you would, but maybe in Canada not so much.

00:09:23 James Valentine

Yeah, my kids have told me the thumbs up emoji is not on. I was shocked it says, says Gen X Rachel. So just explain to me why the thumbs up is wrong.

00:09:34 Emily Halloran

Ah so, this thumbs up is perhaps wrong because there is now an option for a heart as well. So if you use a thumbs up, you’re choosing something that’s kind of less strong. You’re going, ‘yeah, that’s fine’ or ‘that’s OK’ rather than ‘hey, I love it’, which is obviously what everybody wants to hear about their amazing idea at work – that you love it.

00:09:53 James Valentine

Yeah, right.

00:09:55 James Valentine

And so then the thumbs up seems a bit like, ‘oh yeah, that’s OK it’s …’ What are they taking it as a bit of a faint praise?

00:10:03 Emily Halloran

Perhaps as a second rate, like dismissive, even, maybe.

00:10:08 James Valentine

Yeah. Wow, that sounds. I– who knew the thumbs up could end up so dangerous?

00:10:12 James Valentine

I mean I think I only use a thumbs up when I’m like ‘yep, I’m in’, you know? Like I think of it as quite enthusiastic. I’m doing it now.

00:10:19 Emily Halloran

Well, maybe you need to upgrade to the heart.

00:10:21 James Valentine

Emily, I’m loving this conversation I’m giving it a thumbs up! I’m not gonna do a heart. Like I just did the heart. You know, with the fingers when you joined each hand to hand forming the heart? Emily, this is a great conversation, heart.

00:10:35 Emily Halloran

Ohh, it does come across a bit condescending when you say it like that.

00:10:37 James Valentine

Kate?

00:10:42 Kate

Hello.

00:10:43 James Valentine

Now OK, am I confusing emoticons and emojis?

00:10:47 Kate

It might be pedantic of me to point out, but I just thought you know, for the purposes of educating everyone, there is a difference between an emoji and an emoticon.

00:10:57 James Valentine

1. What’s the what?

00:10:59 Kate

So emojis, we all know the symbols with the emojis, but emoticons are made up of like they’re kind of bigger images that are made up of sets of other grammatical punctuation things like slashes and parentheses and other things to make more like a picture of something rather than just a symbol that is one just emoji, if that makes sense.

00:11:18 James Valentine

Ohh, so the emoticon, is this like the original kind of way of doing this? When we’d make a little face symbol out of parentheses and 2 dots or something?

00:11:27 Kate

Yes, exactly. My favourite is the shrug emoticon where it kind of looks like someone with their arms outstretched, doing kind of shrug, looking emoji emoticons. Quite fun.

00:11:40 James Valentine

And that and that’s usually made out of, you know, lines and forward and backward slash and that sort of thing.

00:11:48 Kate

Yeah, to be honest, I usually just like google it and cut and paste it into my text rather than actually memorising how to create it from scratch.

00:11:56 James Valentine

Yeah. Yeah. Kate, thank you so much for that.

00:12:00 James Valentine

Emily Halloran, the tone that’s being communicated. This is so interesting, isn’t it? ‘Cause what I’ve found with emails, and perhaps even more so with text, that it was very hard to get tone into the, it was very hard to indicate that I’m joking here or I’m just having a bit of a lend or even sometimes that I’m being actually quite serious. Like it the … for some reason tone in these forms is really quite hard to communicate.

00:12:27 Emily Halloran

Really challenging and that’s one of the beauties of emojis, is that I mean, assuming you’re not using the thumbs up because that’s a bit contentious, but you know, you can use emojis to convey how you are feeling, to convey the tone of your message. You can put smiling face or a laughing face to show that you’re joking.

00:12:44 James Valentine

Mmmm.

00:12:45 Emily Halloran

They’re really helpful, but again, you gotta be careful about knowing how they’re going to be received.

00:12:51 James Valentine

Yeah, but that that’s. I mean, it now it seems as though people are misreading the tone or putting in a particular interpretation onto something like the thumbs up symbol.

00:13:01 Emily Halloran

I mean, I guess that’s also how, possibly how different groups of people are using emojis.

00:13:06 James Valentine

Yeah, yeah. ‘Hang on,’ says, says Catherine. ‘I’ve just tuned in the thumbs up is my go-to emoji. I use it all the time to say, “Yep, all good” or “Yep, love it” or “Yep, that’s right”. What’s now changed? Bloody millennials,’ says Catherine. Yeah. You might have to be careful. Jordan?

00:13:23 Jordan

Hello.

00:13:24 James Valentine

What do you get confused on?

00:13:26 Jordan Holden

Hello firstly hello to Emily. It’s Jordan Holden. We know each other from way back. I have a question about the prayer hands emoji. I’m arguing because I often use it to say, ‘thank you’, right? But I got into a discussion with my mother the other day because I’ll just, she said, oh, you know, ‘left something in the fridge for you’. Something like that.

00:13:48 Jordan Holden

I said, ‘I’ll, you know, I’ll get that later. Prayer hands emoji.’ And she sent a message back saying, ‘I’m praying for you’. And I just double checked. I thought, well, maybe that’s coincidental, maybe she just felt like she needed to let me know that she’s praying. But then I thought, hang on, I did send the praying hands, so I should double check

00:14:07 Jordan Holden

So it turns out that you know, with her friends who you know, she’ll use that when they’re actually praying for each other, whereas I’ll use it to say thank you.

00:14:17 James Valentine

Thanks. Thanks very much. Yeah, yeah.

00:14:17 Jordan Holden

And I asked another friend as well, and, you know, how she uses it? And she said, well, it’s contextual.

00:14:26 Jordan Holden

So I’d be interested to hear Emily’s thoughts on that.

00:14:29 James Valentine

Emily, say hello to Jordan.

00:14:31 Emily Halloran

Hey, Jordan. Yeah, it’s absolutely contextual. I mean, this particular emoji in the special emoji name group is called ‘folded hands’. So I guess that becomes a little bit ambiguous at that point as to whether it is praying hands, in a folded gesture, or whether it’s saying thank you with folded hands.

00:14:50 Emily Halloran

I often actually use this one as a high five and did for years until someone says to me, oh, this is actually prayer hands. So [unintelligible] I thought it was a high five.

00:14:58 James Valentine

Ohh, you thought.

00:15:01 James Valentine

When you said, when you said folded hands, are you talking about? There’s another. I’m seeing as the prayer hands. The 2 hands flat against one another like namaste hands.

00:15:10 Emily Halloran

Yes, that is, those are the hands, but they call it ‘folded hands’ for some reason.

00:15:13 James Valentine

Ohh folded hands. Ohh, I think folded hands is one over the other sort of thing.

00:15:18 James Valentine

You know like.

00:15:18 Emily Halloran

Yeah, maybe they chose that name to avoid labelling it as whether it was prayer or thanks.

00:15:24 James Valentine

Wow, Emily, it’s a fascinating area. Thank you so much. Diana says one of my kids said to me recently, ‘Can you tone down the thumbs up? They do come across as very passive aggressive, and I don’t respond positively to them.’ Wow. Just be careful out there, people. It’s a minefield. Emily, thanks so much.

00:15:44 Emily Halloran

Thanks for having me.

00:15:45 James Valentine

Great to talk to you, Emily Halloran.

Want more advice about using emojis at work?

Visit our blog for more advice about the use and abuse of emojis at work.

We cover:

• when to use them
• why they get people into legal hot water
• who might misinterpret their meaning.