L2/20-213 Hand with palm facing up and Hand with palm facing down for Unicode 14.0

[William_J_G Overington]

I have yesterday sent formal comment on the proposal to the Unicode 
Technical Committee.

Except for the final sentence and the change of date, the formal comment 
is the same text as in my original post.

The final sentence of the formal comment is as follows.

So could there be three new emoji for these hand gestures rather than 
just the two in the proposal please?
William Overington
Wednesday 23 September 2020


------ Original Message ------
From: "wjgo_10009--- via Unicode" <unicode at unicode.org>
To: unicode at unicode.org
Sent: Friday, 2020 Sep 18 At 19:10
Subject: L2/20-213 Hand with palm facing up and Hand with palm facing 
down for Unicode 14.0
I refer to the following document.

https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2020/20213-palms-up-down-emoji.pdf 
<https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2020/20213-palms-up-down-emoji.pdf>

Hand with palm facing up and Hand with palm facing down for Unicode 14.0

The meaning of the proposed emoji 'Hand with palm facing down' is fine.

My own experience is that this is quite formal.

For example, as in the following.

“Good evening ma’am, may I have the pleasure of this dance?” and offers 
his right hand, palm down, as if in a formal ballroom setting.

The meaning of the proposed emoji 'Hand with palm facing up' as "drop, 
go away, drop it, put down" does not correspond with my own personal 
experience, though the concept mentioned later in the document of "Palm 
up can indicate a lack of knowledge" does in the sense of "Who knows!", 
though I do not understand quite what "Palm up can indicate a lack of 
knowledge cross-linguistically" means. But my lack of experience of the 
meanings stated in the document is no reason whatsoever not to encode 
the proposed meanings for that hand gesture.

However, I am thinking that the proposed 'Hand with palm facing up' 
could be renamed as 'Hand with palm facing up with fingers upward' and a 
third emoji 'Hand with palm facing up with fingers downward' added.

For me, 'Hand with palm facing up with fingers downward' is a common 
gesture, such as inviting a visitor to home or office (in antepandemicum 
times and hopefully in the future) to sit down and make himself or 
herself comfortable, or to indicate "after you" when two lanes of road 
traffic are merging at road works, or "please proceed" when letting a 
car from a side road into queued road traffic. The custom being that the 
other driver raises his or her hand in acknowledgement and thanks.

For another example, going into a restaurant (in antepandemicum times 
and hopefully in the future) early evening when all of the trade at that 
time of day appears to be take-aways, and asking if one can have a sit 
down meal at present (as one is going direct from work to an evening 
institute meeting) and the manager indicating 'yes certainly' in speech 
and by a palm up fingers downward gesture towards the empty seated area 
of the restaurant.

So should there be three new emoji for these hand gestures rather than 
just the two in the proposal?

William Overington

Friday 18 September 2020



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