:raising_hand: :blush: :thumbsup: :pencil: :thumbsup: :video_camera: . :peach: :raising_hand: :pensive: :thumbsdown: :pencil: :smiley: .

I pride myself on being good at expressing myself in words and even video. But I'm ashamed of how bad I am at writing in emoji.

:eyeglasses: :rice_scene: :rice_scene: :rice_scene: :confused: :rocket: :microscope: . :point_right: :eyeglasses: :newspaper: :sob: :question:

Trying to decipher all these tiny pictures feels like rocket science. Have you understood any of this article so far, or is it just frustrating?

:crystal_ball: :loudspeaker: :question: :phone: :arrow_right: :fax: :arrow_right: :e-mail: :arrow_right: :iphone: :arrow_right: :smiley: :question: :smile_cat: :kissing_cat: :scream_cat: :joy_cat: :smiley_cat: :heart_eyes_cat: :smirk_cat: :crying_cat_face: :pouting_cat: :question: :exclamation: :dancer: :dancer: :dancer: :dancer: :question:

Is this really the future of digital communications? Nine variations of a cat face?! Salsa dancing ladies?

:peach: :bust_in_silhouette: :raising_hand: :heart: :page_facing_up: :thumbsup: :thumbsdown: :smiley: :hand: . :couple: :family: :two_women_holding_hands: :two_men_holding_hands: :pencil: :smiley: :chart_with_upwards_trend: , :art: :smiley: :chart_with_upwards_trend: :iphone: :computer: .

But whether we word lovers like it or not, emojis are here to stay. Their popularity has skyrocketed, and the emoji palette has been growing on smartphones and computers.

:raising_hand: :bulb: ...

So I decided to...

Oh, I give up! Give me words! Real words! They’re so much easier. :peach: as much as I want to :running: from these cartoons, I :no_entry: .They are rapidly seeping into the vernacular of the :globe_with_meridians: . It’s a :anchor: or :swimmer: situation.

I get :e-mail: now with little characters in the subject line. My text messages and social media feeds are increasingly full of :smiley: -only sentences or thoughts. Instagram, specifically, says nearly :four: :zero: % of the text posts on its apps contain emojis. Domino’s even lets you order a pie now via tweet with just a :pizza: .

Emoji is the new lingua franca. And like learning any new language, brain power, practice and tricks are required—especially for an idiom that has :poop: and :ghost: but no equal sign.

Unfortunately, there is no :rose: :gem: for emoji yet, so this week I took it upon myself to create my own :smiley: :school: and become a better emoji-unicator.

Understand the Language

My first :signal_strength: was understanding that :smiley: is unlike any other language out there. Yes, a small character can be a substitute for a word, or many words—similar to Chinese. But taken together, the language lacks the grammar, vocabulary, syntax and semantics of a true language.

The result can be complete and utter ambiguity, which is why most are confused by a string of characters sewn together. Take, for instance, this coupling: :car: :house: .

“So… a car and a house. Easy!” Yes, that’s obviously the literal translation. But it could also mean “I am going home.” Or it could mean “I left the car at home.” Or it could even mean a “car’s house,” aka “garage”—since there isn’t a dedicated character for that.

Emoji Lingo Cheat Sheet :running: :clock330: Running late :thumbsup: :four_leaf_clover: Good luck :honeybee: :speak_no_evil: Be quiet :point_right: :traffic_light: :girl: You go girl :eyes: :point_right: :soon: See you soon :tada: :alarm_clock: Party time :telephone_receiver: :point_up: Call me :no_good: :tea: Not my cup of tea :nut_and_bolt: :point_right: Screw you :monkey: :moneybag: Monkey business :smoking: :fire: Smoking hot :bomb: :shell: Bomb shell :moyai: :star: Rock star :performing_arts: :princess: Drama queen :toilet: :page_facing_up: Toilet paper

But emojis have a “useful ambiguity,” says Mark Davis, the president and co-founder of Unicode, the group charged with defining the characters for all :iphone: :computer: ​—including emoji ​characters. He believes they are best used as an “adjunct” to text—especially in social media—helping to ​make up for the the lack of gestures, ​facial ​expressions and ​intonation ​found in speech​.​​

“ :smiley: :sunglasses: :muscle: :dancer: :iphone: :hourglass: :straight_ruler: :link: :book: :heavy_plus_sign: :stew: :yum: :large_blue_circle: :sunflower: :joy: ,” Dr. Davis said.

"Emojis are strongest in social media: in quick, short messages where they connect with the reader and add flavor, color and emotion."

He thought I was a bit :chestnut: :chestnut: :chestnut: for even attempting to write the first part of this article strictly in :smiley: .

But even to just supplement text with emoji, you need to adjust your brain to think visually: how to communicate in cartoon.

For me, that meant replacing certain quick responses and feelings with some basic characters. A :thumbsup: is an easy way to say “Sounds good!” I can convey my bad mood about having to work on Sunday with just a :rage: or my excitement for my sister’s landing a new job with not one :heart_eyes: but :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: .

When I started to embrace that, I felt in some peculiar way that my text messages had more emotion. In switching from :telephone: and :couple: communications to primarily :page_facing_up: , we have lost out on the feelings that can only be conveyed in inflection and :blush: :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: :joy: :persevere: :sob: :disappointed_relieved: :weary: :open_mouth: .

Learn the Vocabulary

Getting a handle on just how and when I should start using emojis instead of words was the easy part, figuring out how to actually :mag_right: the emojis to help me express myself was much harder.

The best :speech_balloon: I got came from Jonas Downey, a self-proclaimed expert emoji communicator and co-creator of Emojisaurus.com, a website that provides emoji translations of popular phrases.

“ :open_mouth: :one: :zero: :zero: :question: :grimacing: :bulb: :pencil: :100: ,” Mr. Downey told me. “Making emoji phrases is like writing sentences in English—you get better when you know the whole vocabulary.”

So I took his :speech_balloon: : I sat down with the iOS emoji keyboard, and got to :books: . Why hadn’t I been using :muscle: to tell people I was at the gym? Or :point_right: :wine_glass: to ask people out for drinks? Or :toilet: to say, well, you know?

The trouble is that the characters that would best express ourselves aren’t always there. One reason is that emoji comes from :jp: . (In Japanese, emoji means “picture character.”) By my count, :five: % of the nearly :nine: :zero: :zero: emojis available to :iphone: users aren't going to be useful to many people in the U.S., like :izakaya_lantern: and :beginner: .

That also means many potentially useful characters are missing. While there are :hatched_chick: :hatching_chick: :chicken: :baby_chick: :rooster: , there is still no single emoji for :fire: :dog: .

We are now starting to see an expansion of the emoji language, including some very American characters. Microsoft has just added :middle_finger: to its keyboard in Windows 10. (It isn’t available for Android or iOS). And both Microsoft and Apple now support :star_trek: . (You know, “Live long and prosper.”) In the years to come, we can expect more and more :us: :smiley: .

Lean on Apps

With a better understanding of the new vocabulary at my :point_up: , I was ready to put it into use. But this is where our :iphone: are failing us.

The :smiley: keyboards on iPhone or Android :iphone: are utterly disorganized and unfamiliar. Yes, they will automatically add your most used :smiley: to one pane, but even if you get the hang of where some are located, you’re stuck swiping through pages of little cartoons.

The recent iOS 8.3 update improves this, but I still like :two: keyboards from the App Store better. The :moneybag: :one: Emoji++ app allows you to just scroll vertically through the repository. Unfortunately, right now, it does not support iOS’s new multiracial option, which lets users change :baby_yellow: :baby_pale: :baby_cream: :baby_moderate_brown: :baby_dark_brown: :baby_black: , even :father_christmas: . David Smith, the creator of the app, plans to add support for it into the app next month.

The different faces of emoji Woman with bunny ears Android Apple Microsoft Face screaming in fear Android Apple Microsoft

I also fell in :heart: with Keymoji. Although it also doesn’t have the multiracial option, it suggests emoji as you type in regular text, right on top of the keyboard. And it doesn’t just suggest regular emojis. For instance, when I typed “long time no see” it suggested :straight_ruler: :alarm_clock: :see_no_evil: . Some emoji elitists may say this sort of thing is cheating, but I won’t tell anyone!

Some Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy S6 handle emoji organization better than Apple. In each category of organization—People, Nature, Objects—you can simply vertically scroll to see the options, no annoying horizontal swiping through pages of screens. I also :heart: Samsung’s newest emoji keyboard, which forgoes Android’s default too-cartoony styling to look more like this :samsung_emoji: .

However, on a whole, Android users lack quality emoji characters and apps. The best I found for my needs was SwiftKey (also available on iOS). The popular keyboard app auto-suggests some emojis as you type, for instance :pizza: , :fries: , :doughnut: , but it isn’t as advanced as Keymoji. And none can make up for the fact that Google still hasn’t brought different skin tones to Android and its human emojis, :android_girl: :android_boy: , look like the Minions from "Despicable Me."

This :heavy_plus_sign: another layer of confusion to communicating in emoji. Because the software platform creators control the visual representation, an emoji sent by an iPhone user to an Android phone user will :eyes: different—in some cases, really different. Take my beloved :dancer: . Red dress. Great moves. She can be used for many expressions from “social” to “party.” On Android, it’s :android_dancer: . Yes, a yellow blob with a rose in its mouth. Send that to someone, and the :rose: :gun: .

A few Android apps promise to ease the pain and translate Android emoji to iOS. The best one I found was Sliding Emoji Keyboard iOS, though it is slightly less convenient to switch to a dedicated emoji keyboard in Android than in iOS.

That brings us to my most important emoji learning of all:

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :thumbsup: :smiley: :heavy_exclamation_mark: :birthday: :sushi: :baseball: :thumbsup: :smiley: :heavy_exclamation_mark: :revolving_hearts: :heartpulse: :sparkling_heart: :thumbsup: :smiley: :heavy_exclamation_mark:

Playful chitchat, literal conversation and sentiment all benefit from these little characters.

:peach: :neutral_face: :speech_balloon: :arrow_right: :e-mail: :scorpius: :soccer: :umbrella: :round_pushpin: :free: .

But serious communication should stay emoji free.

Write to Joanna Stern at joanna.stern@wsj.com