There are some emojis may appear to take up only one character, but actually find more than one character after inputting. This is because actually they are created by joining multiple emojis together, which take up more characters.

Emojis in this situation is known as Emoji ZWJ Sequence, The full name of ZWJ is: ZERO WIDTH JOINER, and there are 1349 emojis are in this form so far.

For instance: emoji 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨 (kiss: woman, man) is made up of 4 emojis 👩 + ❤️ + 💋 + 👨, but takes up 8 characters.

Why 8 characters? In fact there is an invisible character between each emoji called Zero Width Joiner(ZWJ), it acts as a 'glue' to join each emoji together. You can think of these "+" as ZWJ in the picture below.

In a word, a sequence of emojis joined together with a ZWJ character is known as an Emoji ZWJ Sequence.

There are 5 types of Emoji ZWJ Sequences👇:

  • Family

    (👨‍❤️‍👨 = 👨 + ❤️ + 👨)

  • Gender

    (🏄‍♀️ = 🏄 + ♀️)

  • Hair

    (👨‍🦰 = 👨 + 🦰)

  • Other

    (🏳️‍🌈 = 🏳️ + 🌈)

  • Role

    (👨‍💻 = 👨 + 💻)

Emoji ZWJ Sequences List