Unicode is a non-profit organisation based in California that sets a standard for consistent coding of text and emojis in different languages on computers. As well as tackling the representation of different languages through code - the Unicode consortium set out to solve the issue of network communication between different types of computer systems from different software and hardware companies. The Unicode standard is used in most modern programming languages, no matter what phone you have, Unicode is used to represent text and emojis.

Interestingly in recently years, through the use of Unicode, new emojis have appeared that function technically as ligatures. As with traditional typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph. Through the use of the ‘Zero Width Joiner’ (ZWJ) Unicode character, multiple emojis can be combined into a single icon. This Unicode character is like ‘ligature glue’ telling the computer system to combine certain emojis rather than just outputting them beside each other. This way, certain emoji characters can combine into a single emoji ligature.

If a platform doesn’t support the joined characters - a fallback sequence of the individual emojis are displayed. Thus these emoji ligatures are only supported where the individual sequence of emojis also makes sense to a user. Unfortunately you can’t see this magic in action on a keyboard so the ‘ligature glue’ is invisible to the users - who only see the end result.

A full list of emoji ligatures can be seen here.