Write for us

Topics we accept

• A guide to an emoji or small family of emoji that is searched for by feeling or nickname and not yet covered here — check the directory first.
• How a specific emoji is used differently across communities, languages, generations or platforms, with real examples.
• Explainers about emoji mechanics: skin-tone modifiers, ZWJ sequences, variation selectors, why a character renders as a box, what changes in a new Unicode release.
• Emoji etiquette in defined settings (work chat, customer support, dating apps) grounded in observed practice rather than opinion.
• Corrections or substantial improvements to an existing page, sent through the contact form with the page address.

We do not publish: general listicles, content about stickers, GIFs or memes as images, anything that promotes an app, keyboard or product, gambling or adult content, or pieces that exist mainly to carry a link.

Standards

• Original. Written by you, unpublished elsewhere (including your own site), not spun from another guide and not generated wholesale by an AI tool. We check.
• Accurate. Unicode names and code points must be right; we verify every one against the Unicode data. Claims about usage should be observable, and anything that is a fact rather than an observation needs a source we can link.
• Concise. Say what the emoji means, where it goes wrong, and how it compares. There is no minimum word count and no reward for length.
• Plain English. For a general reader, without keyword stuffing or repeated phrases aimed at search engines.
• No misleading claims. No invented statistics, no “studies show” without the study, no presenting a nickname as an official name.

How to submit

1. Send a pitch first, not a finished article: two or three sentences on the emoji or question, why it is not already covered, and what you would say. Use the contact form and choose “Pitch an article”. Include a link to something you have written before if you have one.
2. If the pitch fits, you will get a reply with a brief and a target length. Write the draft and send it as plain text or a shared document link.
3. Drafts are edited for accuracy, structure and house style. Every name and code point is checked against the Unicode data. You will see the edited version before it goes live.
4. Published guides carry the site’s standard layout, a published date and an updated date. If you want a byline, say so in the pitch; a real name and a short description are required for one.

Publication is not guaranteed at any stage, and there is no fee in either direction: we do not pay for articles and we do not accept payment to publish them. Replies to pitches usually take one to two weeks; if you hear nothing after that, the pitch was not taken up.

Links and commercial submissions

Links in a guide are included because they help the reader — to Unicode, to a cited source, to a related page here. We do not promise that any link will be included, followed or kept, and we do not sell links, placements or “sponsored posts”.

If a submission relates to a product, app, service or employer you are connected with, you must say so in the pitch. Undisclosed commercial submissions are rejected and the author is not invited to pitch again. Where a piece is accepted despite a connection, the connection is disclosed on the page, any link to the product is marked rel="sponsored" or nofollow at the editor’s discretion, and the page is labelled so readers can tell. The disclaimer describes the site’s wider commercial position.

Rights

You keep copyright in your text. By submitting a draft you grant Emoji Directory a non-exclusive, perpetual licence to publish, edit and update it on this site. You may republish it elsewhere three months after it appears here, with a link back to the original. We may remove or rewrite a guide if it becomes inaccurate.