Could emojis be helping language?

Those little faces, smiley and otherwise, are spreading their way across global culture.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to think that they could threaten actual language. According to USA Today, however, they might actually be helping text-based communication be more accurate.

Vyv Evans, the author of The Emoji Code, explains that humans can produce more than 10,000 individual expressions during face-to-face conversations. When these expressions are removed, as they are with text, the emotion is robbed from communication, and it is very easy to miscommunicate under those circumstances.

In this way, Emojis are the body language of texting and only help in getting the point across.