It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words - and never more so than on World Emoji Day.

With the yearly celebration day of all things 'emoji' - those little pictures that can be used in the place of words - taking place today, many in Cornwall have been left wondering why they continue to remain unrepresented.

This has led to a campaign being set up to get more Cornish icons added to the emoji list, including the black and white St Piran flag and the Cornish pasty under food.

In 2017 many people thought the pasty emoji had been added to iPhones and iPads, but it was later confirmed this was actually meant to be a Chinese dumpling. 

Leading the charge is the @Jam_First account on Twitter, which works to promote all things Cornish and in particular the 'jam first' method of layering a cream tea, with the jam topped by the cream on a scone or split.

Naturally a cream tea emoji is up there on the wish list, but other Cornish icons are also being sought.

Writing this morning, the account said: "About time we had a jam first (ok and cream first) cream tea, pasty and St Piran Flag emoji don’t you think #WorldEmojiDay?

"How can we make this happen?"

The Twitter account is now calling on Cornish businesses and individuals to register new emojis in the same way as a new trademark, adding: "Come on Cornwall, let’s do this! Join the Emoji for Cornwall."

Details of how can be found below.

The debate on why the Cornish flag and pasty are still sadly lacking as emojis is nothing new - and there are plenty of arguments on why it should happen.

A large proportion of Cornish people argue that while the region is officially classed as a county now, it is in fact a country with its own language and flag, in the same way that other Celtic regions such as Wales and Scotland have retained their own identity.

Even without going down the route of independence, few could argue that with the St Piran continuing to be widely flown and recognised internationally the absence of the black and white flag in the list of options makes no sense.

Similarly, the Cornish pasty has had protected status from the European Commission since 2011 - yet still has no picture representation, despite the French croissant, Chinese fortunate cookie and Mexican burrito all making an appearance.

So what is an emoji?

The word emoji is a contraction of the Japanese words e and moji, which can be roughly translated to mean pictograph.

There is now a whole 'dictionary' of pictures available to mobile phone users to depict how they are feeling, what they are doing or simply illustrate a message - or use in place of text entirely.

And some have taken on their own meaning from their original purpose. The aubergine emoji, for example, is now commonly used to represent a part of the male anatomy, should you be feeling particularly saucy in your message.

When were they introduced?

Emojis are actually pre-dated by 'emoticons' - a combination of the words 'emotion' and 'icon'.

In the very early days of texting people began using punctuation to display their emotions, the most common being a colon, hyphen and circular bracket to create a 'smiley' or unhappy face: ie :-) or :-(

In the 1990s this was taken taken one step further by a Japanese company who created emjois, the more realistic pictures that we see today.

Can you suggest a new one?

According to unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html anyone can submit a proposal for an emoji character, but the proposal needs to have all the right information for it to have a chance of being accepted.

The process to register a new emoji must be done via a special Form for Emoji Proposals and not all not all new emoji require new characters.