# Personal Emoji & GIF Usage Guide

> A guide to how I use Emoji and GIFs (and the 'why?' behind them)

Source: https://curiouslychase.com/posts/personal-emoji-and-gif-usage-guide/

This is a brief guide to how I use Emoji and GIF and a few contextual notes about what Emoji I use, when I use them and what they mean to me.

# Principles

- Unambiguous - use emoji and GIFs that may often have multiple meanings
- Enhancement - only use Emoji as an enhancement to an existing message

# Norms

- **GIF** - I generally choose Adventure Time, Bluey or Muppets / non-human cartoon gifs

# When I use Emoji

- reacting to a message in Slack or Discord
- enhancing an existing message for Twitter
- responding to a text where reactions are limited but words aren't necessary

# How I Use Emoji

My most used public messaging Emoji:

- 🚀 - when I'm excited about something that's happening (shipping software or forward movement in work/side projects)
- ✨ - when I'm in awe of something someone has done or grateful for something that's happened/happening
- 🌱 - when someone (including myself) has a moment of self reflection or personal growth

My most used private (Slack/Messages) Emoji:

- ✅ - I have done something about this
- 👀 - I am looking into this (also, acknowledgement that I've seen something)
- 🦺 - I believe this is safe to try

My most used Emoji for Pull Request (code) reviews:

- ℹ️ - I am giving you context for this change
- ❓ / ❔ - I am asking an exploratory question based on my experience 
- 📌 - I'm requesting this be changed
- ‼️ - I believe this could be problematic, can we discuss

Other Emoji I use:

- 🎉 - when I'm excited about something personal
- 💙 - when I've had a good moment with a peer
- 💜 - when someone has noticed a moment of personal growth for me

Emoji I try to avoid:

- most people faces and hand symbols
- 🔥 - ambiguous