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Emoticon (pronounced (IPA) ), a portmanteau of Emotion Icons or Emotion Iconization, an emoticon, also called a smiley, is a sequence of ordinary printable characters, such as ":-)", "^_^", "._.", "XD", "X8", "-_-", "=D", "=p", etc. or a small image, intended to represent a human facial expression and convey an emotion. Emoticons are a form of paralanguage commonly used as extended interpunction symbols in e-mail, instant messaging, online chat, bulletin boards and Internet forums; without them simple statements could be misinterpreted. Sometime during 1981, Scott Fahlman (now a Principal Research Scientist in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University), devised a scheme for encoding and conveying one's feelings in small text "glyphs" to overcome this frustration. The word emoticon is, according to popular etymology, a combination of emotion and icon. A similar word, verticon (from vertical and icon), is sometimes used when referring to the East Asian style of emoticon. The smile is represented with a basic smiley :-). The colon represents the eyes, the hyphen is for the nose, and the bracket is for the mouth. Many variants exist with different symbols substituted for the basic ones. The symbol for the nose is often omitted, for example :) or ;). When the colon is replaced with the equals sign, =), the nose is almost always omitted (so one would not see =-), for example). This is also used to make figures, objects and animals, in other words an art-form.
Background In 1912 Ambrose Bierce proposed "an improvement in punctuation - the snigger point, or note of cachinnation: it is written thus ('('0')') ___/! and presents, as near as may be, a smiling mouth. It is to be appended, with the full stop, or exclamation mark as Bierce's later example used to every jocular or ironical sentence".• Even then, the idea of codifying emotional content in written or message form was not new. The National Telegraphic Review and Operators Guide in April 1857 documented the use of the number 73 in Morse code to express "love and kisses" (later reduced to the more formal "best regards"). Dodge's Manual in 1908 documented the reintroduction of "love and kisses" as the number 88. Gajadhar and Green comment that both are more succinct than modern abbreviations such as LOL.• • (See Morse Code Abbreviations for these and further abbreviations.) In 1963, the smiley face, a yellow button with two black dots representing eyes and an upturned thick curve representing mouth, was created by freelance artist Harvey Ball. It was realized on order of a large insurance company as part of a campaign to bolster the morale of its employees and soon became a big hit. This smiley presumably inspired later emoticons; the most basic graphic emoticon depicts in fact a small, yellow, smiley face. The earliest known non-ASCII emoticons were used in the PLATO IV program as early as 1972, which allowed users to type multiple text characters "on top" of each other. Many combinations of ordinary text characters were known to produce face-like patterns, which were used as emoticons. In an 1969-04-16 New York Times interview, Alden Whitman asked writer Vladimir Nabokov: "How do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate past?" Nabokov answered, "I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile — some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question." That interview has been reprinted in the collection of interviews and editorials by Nabokov.• Several Internet websites —such as BT's Connected Earth— assert that Kevin Mackenzie proposed -) as a joke-marker in April 1979, on a message board called MsgGroup. The idea was to indicate tongue-in-cheek — the hyphen represented a tongue, not a nose. Although it has two out of the three characters of ":-)", its intended interpretation was different and it doesn't appear to have inspired the later smileys. Every issue of the British fashion magazine i-D, founded in 1980, has featured a cover model with a winking right eye (or sometimes obscured in a different way). Creation of :-) and :-( The creator of the original ASCII emoticons :-) and :-(, with a specific suggestion that they be used to express emotion, was Scott Fahlman; the text of his original proposal, posted to the Carnegie Mellon University computer science general board on 1982-09-19 (11:44), was considered lost for a long time. It was however recovered twenty years later (2002-09-10) by Jeff Baird, from old backup tapes. Web usage In Web forums and instant messengers, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which came to be called emoticons as well. Similarly, in some versions of Microsoft Word, the Auto Correct feature replaces basic smileys such as :) and :( with a single smiley-like character. Originally, these image emoticons were fairly simple and replaced only the most straightforward and common character sequences, but over time they became so complex that the more specialized emoticons are often input using a menu or popup windows, sometimes listing hundreds of items. Some of these graphical emoticons do not actually represent faces or emotions; for example, an "emoticon" showing a guitar might be used to represent music. Further, some instant messaging software is designed to play a sound upon receiving certain emoticons. An August 2004 issue of the Risks Digest (comp.risks on USENET) pointed out a problem with such features which are not under the sender's control: It's hard to know in advance what character-strings will be parsed into what kind of unintended image. A colleague was discussing his 401(k) plan with his boss, who happens to be female, via instant messaging. He discovered, to his horror, that the boss's instant-messaging client was rendering the "(k)" as a big pair of red smoochy lips. • Emoticons are also commonly used in online computer games. Purposes Emoticons have developed over the years as a replacement for facial expressions and other emotional cues lacking in text-only communication; the goal is to avoid misunderstandings due to the lack of contextual information. Many books have been written on this subject, with voluminous listings of emoticons. Western style Traditionally, the emoticon in Western style is written from left to right, the way one reads and writes in most Western cultures. Thus, most commonly, you'll see the eyes on the left, followed by the nose and mouth. To more easily recognise them, tilt your head toward your left shoulder (or occasionally toward your right shoulder if the "top" of the emoticon is toward the right). Common examples A list of some of the most common emoticons follows. As displayed here, they all use a relatively consistent form, but each of them can also be transformed by being rotated, having the hyphen omitted, and so on (see Variation below). More comprehensive lists may be found under External links below. -- or |} Not all emoticons are meant to be looked at sideways. The following are emoticons that are meant to be looked at without rotation. ==O || a sword |- | align="center" | o/ || joy ( and / are arms, o is head, also can be a variation on "lol" (laugh out loud) where the "" and "/" represent the "l"s. |- | align="center" | m/ or m/_ || Representing the Corna or "devil horns" sign, used for rocking or metal music |- | align="center" | o/ || Waving |- | align="center" | |- | align="center" | <(" <) -or- (> ")> -or- <(..<) -or- (>..)> || Kirby |- | align="center" | ( | align="center" | (¤Д¤) || fear, or bad surprise |- | align="center" | ~(O_O)~ || The Flying Spaghetti Monster |- | align="center" | ("('o')/") || Rawr |- | align="center" | ("(^_^)/") || Bear hug |} Some commonly used lewd emoticons: ( , , , ,):D masturbation | align="center" | |:| Not Amused Variation There are endless possibilities, because people are very good at creating and interpreting pictures as faces. See ASCII art. An equal sign is often used for the eyes in place of the colon, without changing the meaning of the emoticon. In these instances, the hyphen is almost always either omitted or, occasionally, replaced with an 'o' as in =o). Lately it has become common to omit the hyphen, whether a colon or an equal sign is used for the eyes *. In general, similar-looking characters are commonly substituted for one another: for instance, o, O, and 0 can all be used interchangeably, sometimes for subtly different effect. A few people turn the smiley around, a "left handed" smiley (: This left-handed smiley can sometimes cause miscommunication though, since some hardcore net addicts tend to drop the representing the eyes leaving ) instead of :) so what was intended to be a smile could be interpreted as a frown. Some variants are also more common in certain countries because of reasons like keyboard layouts, for example the smiley =) is common in Scandinavia and Finland where the keys for = and ) are placed right beside each other and both need the use of the shift key. There also exists the use of umlauts to achieve emoticons that aren't tilted to the side. For example, Ö is the upright version of :O (meaning that one is surprised). As more of a joke than anything – but also as a political statement – "frownies", the symbol -(, were trademarked by Despair, Inc. in U.S. Trademark Serial No. 75502288, Registration No. 2347676. The trademark applies only to "Printed matter namely, greeting cards, posters and art prints". In January 2001 Despair issued a satirical press release in which it was announced that the company would be suing "over 7 million internet users" who had infringed their trademark. They subsequently issued another press release a month later in response to the reaction their claim had generated. XD (used to represent laughing) supposedly became popular on the internet shortly after it was used in the television show, South Park, usually explained to the unknowing as the emoticon being akin to the animation method used when a character was laughing so hard they had their eyes closed (a sideways X for their eyes). Posture emoticons orz (sometimes seen as OTL Or2, On_, OTZ, O7Z, Sto, Jto, _no, _|￣|○) spawned a subculture in late 2004.* It illustrates a person facing left and kneeling on the ground: the "o" symbolizes the head, the "r" represents the arms and the body while the "z" shows the legs. Though people use the pictograph to show that they have failed and/or they are in despair, some people, in Taiwan, use it to show that they laugh a lot so that they kneel down. It is not read phonetically, the letters are spelled out. Not to be confused with m(_ _)m, which means an apology. Orz is associated sometimes with the phrase "nice guy" - that is, the concept of males being rejected for a date by girls they are pursuing with a phrase like "You're a nice guy," "I'd like to be your friend," etc., à la "nice guy syndrome". On imageboards, it has been used not only for failure and despair, but also as a symbol for the kowtow, illustrating instead a person bowing down in worship of a certain picture that was posted. East Asian style Users from East Asia (particularly Japanese language speakers those who visit 2channel) popularized a style of emoticons known as , which can be understood without turning one's head to the left. These styles of faces roughly resemble the style commonly found in Japanese anime and manga comic books. These emoticons are usually found in a format similar to ( can be appended to the emoticon to imply apprehension or embarrassment, à la the anime sweat drop. Many other characters can be appended to also indicate arms or hands, e.g. <(^_^)> or ⊂( ﾟ ヮﾟ)⊃. Basic examples Complex examples | |- | align="center" | m/ d-_-b m/ |mb dm| || Rocker listening to music |- | align="center" | (ô ô) || boy (sometimes also used to indicate surprise) |- | align="center" | (ö ö) || girl |- | align="center" | (ó ò) || surprised, scared |- | align="center" | (ò ó) || angry |- | align="center" | (ó ô) || quizzical or "Indeed" (designed to mimic Star Trek's Mr. Spock) |- | align="center" | (╥_─) || annoyed, hiding frustration, dread |- | align="center" | =^_^= || blushing, or a cat face (mischievous) |- | align="center" | (,,,)=^_^=(,,,) || cat looking over something |- | align="center" | -^_^- || blushing |- | align="center" | fO_o || scratching head |- | align="center" | ^n_n^ || catgirl or boy |- | align="center" | d-_-b || listening to music, labeling title afterwards |- | align="center" | |- | align="center" | <(^_^)>,(>^_^)>, etc. || dancing, especially used to specifically show Kirby dancing |- | align="center" | (>^_^)> <(^_^<), (>'-')> <('-'<) || hugging |- | align="center" | (>^(>O_o)> || sexual intercourse, normally used to depict rape and/or anal sex (extensible) |- | align="center" | c= UoU;; || exasperation (notice the anime bubble; can be abbreviated, V.V;;) |- | align="center" | ( ~^_^)~ || dancing |- | align="center" | (9ò_ó)-o || fighting, throwing a punch |- | align="center" | Q(^.^Q) || winner |- | align="center" | /¯_/°^_^°_/¯ || Sailor Moon (extensible) |- | align="center" | w-('u')-w || Kilroy was here (extensible) |- | align="center" | p(^o^)q || good luck |- | align="center" | b(~_^)b, d-(^_^)-b, (b^_^)b, etc. || thumbs-up |- | align="center" | p(-_-)p || thumbs-down |- | align="center" | t(-_-t) or ,,l,(>.<),l,, || flipping off |- | align="center" | (^^ .)\// || giving the V-sign |- | align="center" | m <(~_~)> m || kitten |- | align="center" | m/>_ | align="center" | ,,/(^_^),,/ || happy rockin' |- | align="center" | ,,/.(^_^) || giving the peace sign |- | align="center" | (¬_¬)/¯ || "It's good... to go!" |- | align="center" | | ||||||||
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