I’m sure you don’t need to be told the reason behind the delay at this point but in case you’ve somehow been in lockdown before everything got bad, it’s because of the coronavirus. Don’t panic though because the 2020 emoji update is still happening on schedule!

You either hate emojis or you love them. We at Stuff are divided on the subject, like the rest of the world, so while some of us are old-fashioned try-hards who refuse to adapt to the current culture the other half insists on using irritating little yellow faces that could very easily just be words. Points to you if you can figure out the stance of the person writing this. Honestly, no one here has an issue with emojis, it’s just a matter of personal preference really. Unfortunately, personal preference isn’t going to save next years batch of emotive images from being delayed until much later.

Unicode Consortium, the folks behind emojis, have confirmed that Version 14 of everyone’s favourite yellow characters that are neither Simpsons or Minions, has been delayed by six months. While Unicode Consortium usually puts out new additions to the emoji characters every march, the ongoing pandemic has ensured that next year’s update will probably only land in September 2021. A six-month delay isn’t too bad, as long as you’re not banking on the protagonist for the Emoji Movie 2 being in that batch.

The Consortium went ahead to confirm that the upcoming emoji update, Version 13 that was announced in March of this year, will continue to develop and launch as planned in August/September of 2020. So at least you fans of wordless messages have something to look forward to, right?