While sci-fi movies from the olden days show people living in the future having video conversations all the time, reality turned out to be quite different. Not that people don’t “skype” and “facetime” each other, but for most of us those are exceptions rather than the rule. In reality, communication has instead regressed to text messaging.

Texting is going through an evolution of its own, however, and the days of trying to add emotion to your words simply using the symbols available on your keyboard like brackets and semicolons are long gone. These days every respectable messaging app supports ...