Editorial Policy

1. Who runs the site

KnowYourEmoji is a one-person project, built and maintained by Marc-Aurele Besner. He decides what gets published and is the person who handles corrections. There is no separate editorial team. The source code, the content files, and their full change history are public on GitHub.

2. How pages are written

Most of the text on the site is drafted with large language models, not written by hand. That covers emoji pages, combo pages, and guides.

• Emoji and combo pages are generated by scripts in the repository. The scripts give the model the emoji's own record and, for emoji pages, the passages from our guides that discuss that emoji. Each draft is then checked automatically, and a draft that fails the checks is not written into the catalog.
• Guides are drafted by an AI writing workflow that opens a pull request. A guide is published only when that pull request is merged.
• Bylines. Guides carry the byline "KnowYourEmoji Editorial". That byline means the process described here, published under Marc-Aurele's oversight. It does not mean a staff of human writers.

Every change to the content lands as a public commit, so you can see when a page changed and what changed on it.

3. What gets indexed

A large part of the emoji catalog was first produced by running one template over the whole emoji list. Those pages share their sentences and do not say much about their particular emoji. They stay online so readers can still use them, but:

• Pages that still carry the template's phrasing are marked noindex and left out of the sitemap. The same rule applies to combo pages.
• Skin-tone variants point search engines to the base emoji's page.
• Automated checks fail the build when a new or rewritten page reuses the template, or reads as a near-copy of another page.

The About page shows how many pages are currently open to search engines.

4. Dates on pages

The date on a page is the date its content file last changed. Many pages were changed together in catalog-wide rewrites, so a recent date often means the page was regenerated in a batch. It does not mean someone reviewed that one page by hand on that day.

5. Corrections

If a meaning is wrong, out of date, or missing an important context, please tell us:

• Open an issue on GitHub (preferred, because it is public and trackable), or
• email hello@knowyouremoji.com.

Marc-Aurele reads every report and typically replies within 3 business days. When a correction is accepted, the fix is made in the content file and shows up as a public commit. Pages are corrected in place; we do not keep a separate corrections log.

6. Money and affiliate links

KnowYourEmoji is self-funded. It makes money in two ways:

• Amazon affiliate links. Links to our books go to Amazon and can carry an Amazon Associates tracking ID. As an Amazon Associate, KnowYourEmoji earns from qualifying purchases. The links are marked sponsored for search engines, and whenever a tracking ID is in use the same disclosure appears in the site footer and on the books page.
• An optional Pro plan for the interpreter. See pricing.

Nobody pays to have an emoji, a meaning, or a product featured. The affiliate links only point to our own books and have no effect on what an emoji page says.

7. The AI interpreter

The interpreter sends your message to a third-party language model and shows its answer. The answer is a suggestion, not a definitive meaning. Interpreted messages are not permanently stored; see the Privacy Policy for details.