Phew. It feels good to get that off my chest.

I feel I’m bit of a fraud. I’m a writer and a wordsmith; I was raised to love words and the complex emotions, ideas, and concepts that they can convey. And yet, I believe I am an active participant in a trend that is contributing to the destruction of not just the English language, but written language in general. What is this scourge in which I am a willing (if guilty) participant? It’s the cutest scourge EVAR! Emojis.

I know. They’re silly. I’m a grown woman and a professional writer. My family hates them. My boyfriend thinks I’m receding into my wasted adolescence: I missed the “cute” years because I was busy being an extremely studious, risk-averse, and uncharacteristically serious teenager. Now, in my thirties, I’m exchanging text messages with friends and coworkers, and the majority of my missives contain tiny images of cartoon faces expressing a range of emotions, jungle animals, lipstick, firearms, and the most adorable explosions and thunderstorms you’ve ever seen. What is wrong with me?

At first, I thought emojis were wonderful: tiny, economical packets of pixelated ideas that could be rapidly exchanged without the need to type out words or ideas on my iPhone’s touchscreen keypad. We all know that popup keypad is fickle; it’s a notoriously annoying feature that is rife with kinks. Don’t want to write “I LUV U”? Send a quick kissy face. Too busy to type “I’m so excited by your news! How thrilling that you’re becoming a mother!”? Just send a quick monkey covering its mouth and a cone spraying confetti into the air. Makes perfect sense.

But then I started to wonder: am I contributing to the ongoing erosion of the English language? Text-speak is already controversial; many believe it’s changing the fabric of written language and destroying young people’s abilities to form coherent sentences. Don’t we take it to a dangerous new level when we replace even abbreviated text “words” with adorable — yet inestimably reductive — faces and icons? Have we irrevocably transformed digital written communication into conversations punctuated with Lucky Charms?

I suppose those of us with any kind of real investment in the proper use and preservation of the English language must bear the load bravely. And for this reason, I think I must endeavor to reclaim words in my texting and social media communications. This may require me to dispense with the emojis and form coherent sentences and phrases to express my thoughts. Don’t worry: I’ll never tell someone I’m “runnin L8 – BRT!”

Perhaps the extreme reliance on emojis I see in my own digital conversations as well as those of others is related to something more serious and possibly more disturbing. I personally believe that social media contributes more to alienation and distance than to connection and communication. Emojis are simply stand-ins for real words and ideas. But more than the intellectual substitutions that take place in emoji-speak are the emotional substitutions. Wouldn’t you feel awful if the last time you spoke to someone was A) via text and B) via emoji? What depth of feeling or passion can be conveyed with a cartoon heart, even if it’s pierced with an adorable Cupid’s arrow?

So, I commit to lessening my reliance on emojis because I believe in the power of words. I’m an adult woman and a professional; why would I use hearts and flowers to communicate with my adult friends and colleagues? It’s been an adorable journey and like, totally awesome to try on the shoes of a popular high school girl with way too much on her mind to like, write out words. But the truth is: that was never me anyway. I love words too much to contribute to their ultimate destruction by being a willing participant in the emojification of the English language.

The time is now for me to once again hoist the flag of the language-lover, valiantly pushing my reading glasses up my nose as I toss my emoji into the sea and sail forth once more on the strong tides of language.

But before I go, here’s one last contribution to the emoji-verse: one of the great Shakespeare quotes, interpreted in adorable but wordless Bardian fashion:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”
Julius Caesar, IV, iii, 218-224

All right: who said it best?

Kathryn Cunningham is a professional writer and social media maven. Dividing her time between her home in midtown Manhattan and many homes on the road, she enjoys supporting the arts in small communities and advocating for rescue dogs.