Thoughts on emojis

The editorial on science emojis really scraped the bottom of the barrel (C&EN, Nov. 14, page 3). Emojis are nothing more than an indication that their users are incapable of expressing themselves with words. The C&EN reporter who had been invited to attend Emojicon should have declined, saying, “Chemists do not need emojis because they can actually read and write words.”

Originality and wit cannot be summoned on command on a weekly basis—I understand that. But if Editor-in-Chief Bibiana Campos Seijo cannot come up with something meaningful to say in her column, it’s perfectly all right to forgo the column every now and then. Fill the space instead with letters to the editor or with readers’ photographs of the views from their laboratories. Filling a page of a respectable publication with illiteracy-promoting drivel was an unfortunate choice.

Dean Meyer
Winder, Ga.