Emoticons originated with text representations.

 

Graphical emoticons range from basic to highly creative.

A portmanteau of the English words emotion (or emote) and icon, an emoticon is a symbol or combination of symbols used to convey emotional content in written or message form. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States

History

Emoticons published in the March 30, 1881 issue of Puck. Events 240 BC - 1st recorded Perihelion passage of Halley's Comet. Year 1881 ( MDCCCLXXXI) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common Puck was America's first successful Humor magazine known for its sharp humor and colorful Cartoon Caricatures satirizing the political

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"). Morse code is a Character encoding for transmitting telegraphic information using standardized sequences of short and long elements to represent the letters numerals Dodge's Manual in 1908 documented the reintroduction of "love and kisses" as the number 88. Gajadhar and Green comment that both Morse code abbreviations are more succinct than modern abbreviations such as LOL. Morse code abbreviations differ from Prosigns for Morse Code in that they observe normal interletter spacing that is they are not "run together" the way prosigns LOL (also written with some or all letters lowercase most commonly as lol or LoL) is a common element of Internet slang used historically ^[1][2]

Typographical emoticons were published in 1881 by the U. S. satirical magazine Puck. Puck was America's first successful Humor magazine known for its sharp humor and colorful Cartoon Caricatures satirizing the political In 1912 Ambrose Bierce proposed "an improvement in punctuation — the snigger point, or note of cachinnation: it is written thus \___/! and presents a smiling mouth. Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24 1842 &ndash 1914? was an American Editorialist Journalist, short-story writer and Satirist. It is to be appended, with the full stop, [or exclamation mark as Bierce's later example used] to every jocular or ironical sentence". ^[3]

Emoticons had already come into use in sci-fi fandom in the 1940s,^[4] although there seems to have been a lapse in cultural continuity between the communities. Fandom (from the noun fan and the affix -dom, as in kingdom, dukedom, etc The 1940s decade ran from 1940 to 1949 Events and trends The 1940s was a period between the radical 1930s and the conservative 1950s which also leads the period to be

An early instance of using text characters to represent a sideways smiling (and frowning) face occurred in an ad for the MGM movie Lili in the New York Herald Tribune, March 10, 1953, page 20, cols. Lili ( 1953) is an American film Considered one among many classic MGM releases it stars Leslie Caron as a touchingly naïve French The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald. 4-6. (See "Creation of :-) and :-(" section below. )

In 1963, the "smiley face", a yellow button with two black dots representing eyes and an upturned thick curve representing a mouth, was created by freelance artist Harvey Ball. The smiley, smiley face, or happy face, is a stylized representation of a smiling human face commonly represented as a yellow circle with two dots representing Smileysvg|right|100px|Smiley]] Harvey Ross Ball ( 10 July 1921 – 12 April 2001) is the earliest known designer of the Smiley. 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 many later emoticons; the most basic graphic emoticon that depicts this is in fact a small, yellow, smiley face.

In a New York Times interview in April 1969, 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. Alden Whitman ( 27 October 1913 - 4 September 1990) was an American journalist This page is about the novelist For his father the politician see Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov. " ^[5]

Proto-emoticons

Starting around 1976, the people on the PLATO System were using emoticons. PLATO was the first (circa 1960 on ILLIAC I) generalized Computer assisted instruction system They had many of the advantages of later character based emoticons because they could be used anywhere that you could type text and new emoticons could be created whenever a user thought a new one up. They also had many of the advantages of later graphical emoticons because they used character overstriking which created graphical images.

Several Internet websites —such as BT's Connected Earth^[6]— assert that Kevin Mackenzie proposed -) as a joke-marker in April 1979, on a message board called MsgGroup. BT Group plc (formerly British Telecommunications plc) which trades as BT (ˌbiːˈtiː bee tee) (previously known as British Telecom and still The idea was to indicate tongue-in-cheek — the hyphen represented a tongue, not a nose. Tongue-in-cheek is a term used to refer to humor in which a statement or an entire fictional work is not meant to be taken seriously but its lack of seriousness is subtle A hyphen ( -) is a Punctuation mark It is used for both Words to join and to separate Syllables It is often confused with the dashes Others used :-) for tongue-in-cheek, with the colon representing teeth. Also used was -:) to indicate sticking out your tongue, in derision or anger. Although similar to a sideways smiling face, the intended interpretation was different and this does not appear to have inspired the later smileys.

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;^[7] the text of his original proposal, posted to the Carnegie Mellon University computer science general board on 19 September 1982 (11:44), was considered lost for a long time. American Standard Code for Information Interchange ( ASCII) Scott Elliot Fahlman (born March 21, 1948, in Medina Ohio, US Carnegie Mellon University (also known as CMU) is a private Research University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a Computer system running software that allows users to connect and login to Events 335 - Dalmatius is raised to the rank of Caesar by his uncle Constantine I. Year 1982 ( MCMLXXXII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link displays the 1982 Gregorian calendar) It was however recovered twenty years later by Jeff Baird, from old backup tapes. ^[8]

19-Sep-82 11:44    Scott E  Fahlman             :)
From: Scott E  Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
        
:-)
        
Read it sideways.   Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes - given current trends.   For this, use
        
:-(

Graphical replacement

In Web forums and instant messengers, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which came to be called emoticons as well. An, or message board, is a Bulletin board system in the form of a discussion site Similarly, in some versions of Microsoft Word, the Auto Correct feature replaces basic smileys such as :-) and :-( with a single smiley-like character. Microsoft Word is Microsoft 's flagship word processing software. 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. Usenet, a Portmanteau of "user" and "network" is a world-wide distributed Internet discussion system A colleague was discussing his 401(k) plan with his boss, who happens to be female, via instant messaging. In the United States of America a 401(k plan allows a worker to save for retirement while deferring Income taxes on the saved money and earnings until withdrawal He discovered, to his horror, that the boss's instant-messaging client was rendering the "(k)" as a big pair of red smoochy lips. ^[9]

Emoticons are also commonly used in online computer games.

The most common type of emoticon is the "smiley" which is simply a cartoon-looking face showing a smile. This has evolved into a variety of different facial expressions including frowns, angry grimaces, blushing, crying, looks of surprise and thousands more. Emoticons have also expanded beyond simple cartoon facial expressions to a variety of still or moving Italic text images, including words, character actions, and images. ^[10]

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, emoticons have the eyes on the left, followed by the nose and mouth. To more easily recognize 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

Main article: List of common emoticons

A list of some of the most common emoticons follows. This is a list of common Emoticons. Western style Traditionally the emoticon in Western style is written from left to right the way one reads 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.

Variation

There are endless possibilities because people are very good at creating and interpreting pictures as faces. See ASCII art. History Typewriter art Since 1867 typewriters have been used for creating visual 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). In some circles it has become acceptable to omit the hyphen, whether a colon or an equal sign is used for the eyes [2]. In other areas of usage, people prefer the larger, more traditional emoticon :-). 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 (:

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. QWERTY keyboardjpg|thumb|right|300px|QWERTY keyboard on a Laptop of 2007]]A keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional Terminology and usage As a cultural term "Scandinavia" has no official definition and is subject to usage by those who identify with the culture in question as well Finland, officially the Republic of Finland ( is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. The shift key is a Modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters Also, sometimes, the user can replace the brackets used for the mouth with other, similar shapes, such as ] and [ instead of ) and ( .

There also exists the use of umlauts to achieve emoticons that aren't tilted to the side. Diaeresis or trema See also Diaeresis History Historically the diaeresis mark or trema is far older than the umlaut mark 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. Despair Inc is a company based in Austin Texas, that produces posters and Souvenirs that satirize the motivational indoctrination common 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.

Some emoticons are created to resemble video game consoles such as the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS. The PlayStation Portable (officially abbreviated PSP) is a Handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The is a dual-screen Handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo.

Posture emoticons

orz (sometimes seen as _|￣|○, OTL Or2, Orz, On_, OTZ, O7Z, Sto, Jto, _no) is a Japanese emoticon representing a kneeling or bowing person, with the "o" being the head, the "r" being the arms and part of the body, and the "z" being part of the body and the legs. This "stick" figure represents failure and despair. It is also commonly (mis-)used for representing a great admiration for (sometimes with an overtone of sarcasm) someone else's view or action. This spawned a subculture in late 2004. For the term in biology see Subculture (biology. For the song by New Order see Sub-culture (song. ^[11]

Though people generally use the pictograph to show that they have failed and/or they are in despair, some users use it to imply being doubled over in laughter. It is not to be read phonetically; the letters are spelled out. Orz should not 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," or "I'd like to be your friend. "

On imageboards, it has been used not only for failure and despair, but also as a symbol for the kowtow, illustrating a person bowing down in worship of a certain picture that was posted. An imageboard (also chan, which itself is short for channel is a type of Internet forum that revolves around the posting of images. Kowtow ( Cantonese Kau tàuh is the act of deep respect shown by kneeling and bowing so low as to touch the head to the ground

Another common posture emoticon is OGC, which depicts a man in the process of masturbation. The emoticon is used to express appreciation or sarcasm toward a sexual topic or image, it became widely used after awareness was raised by a subsequently revised logo for the Office of Government Commerce. The Office of Government Commerce (OGC is an independent office of Her Majesty's Treasury, a department of state in the government of the United Kingdom. ^[12]

Eastern style

Users from East Asia popularized a style of emoticons that can be understood without tilting one's head to the left. This style arose on ASCII NET of Japan in 1986. ^[13]

These emoticons are usually found in a format similar to (*_*), where the asterisks indicate the eyes, the central character, usually an underscore, the mouth, and the parentheses, the outline of the face. An asterisk ( *) (Latin asteriscum "little star" from Greek ἀστερίσκος) is a Typographical symbol or Glyph Eyes are organs that detect Light, and send signals along the Optic nerve to the visual areas of the brain The underscore _ (also called understrike, underbar, low line, or low dash is a character that originally appeared on the Typewriter. A large number of different characters can be used to replace the eyes, which usually is where the emoticon derives its emotive aspect (contrasting the Western emoticons' emoting through the mouth). Different emotions can be expressed by changing the character representing the eyes, for example ' T ' can be used to express crying or sadness (T_T). The emphasis on the eyes is reflected in the common usage of emoticons that use only the eyes, e. g. ^^. Looks of embarrassment are either represented by (x_x) or (-_-). Characters like hyphens or periods can replace the underscore; the period is often used for a smaller, "cuter" mouth or to represent a nose, e. g. (^. ^). Alternatively, the mouth/nose can be left out entirely, e. g. (^^). The parentheses also can often be replaced with braces, e. Brackets are Punctuation marks used in pairs to set apart or interject text within other text g. {^_^}. Many times, the parentheses are left out completely, e. g. ^^ or >. < or o_O or O. O or <. <;; A quotation mark ", apostrophe ', or semicolon ; can be added to the emoticon to imply apprehension or embarrassment, in the same way that a sweat drop is used in anime films. Sometimes smiley (^^) is misunderstood - people thinking it represents eyebrows. Many other characters can be appended to also indicate arms or hands, e. g. <(^_^)> or \(^o^)/ or ⊂( ﾟ ヮﾟ)⊃ or <(--<) or v^. ^V or ^^b.

Microsoft IME 2002 (Japanese) or later supports the use of both forms of emoticons by enabling Microsoft IME Spoken Language Dictionary. In IME 2007, it was moved to Emoticons dictionary.

Western use of East Asian style

English-language anime forums adopted those emoticons that could be used with the standard ASCII characters available on western keyboards. (anime in Japanese, Because of this, they are often called "anime style" emoticons in the English-speaking Internet. They have since seen use in more mainstream venues, including online gaming, instant-messaging, and other non-anime related forums. Emoticons such as <(^. ^)>, <(<. <)>, <(o_o<), (//_;) (;-;+, which include the parentheses, mouth or nose, and arms (especially those represented by the inequality signs < or >) also are often referred to as "Kirbies" in reference to their likeness to Nintendo's video game character, Kirby. is a Multinational corporation headquartered in Kyoto Japan founded on A video game is a Game that involves interaction with a User interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. is the main character of Nintendo 's ''Kirby'' video game series created by Masahiro Sakurai and developed by HAL Laboratory. The parentheses are usually dropped when used in the English language context, and the underscore of the mouth may be extended as an intensifier, e. g. ^____^ for very happy. The famous kirby emotion is (>^_^)><(^_^<) .

Mixture of western and East Asian style

Exposure to both western and East Asian style emoticons or emoji through web blogs, instant messaging, and forums featuring a blend of Western and Asian pop culture, has given rise to emoticons that have an upright viewing format. The parentheses are similarly dropped in the English language context and the emoticons only use alphanumeric characters and the most commonly used English punctuation marks. Emoticons such as -O-, -3-, -w-, ' - ', ; - ;, and particularly the emoticon . V. , are used to convey mixed emoticons that are more difficult to convery with traditional emoticons. The emoticon -O- is used to express a sense of slight disppointment and embarrassment. In 2007, the emoticon . V. was created by S. C. Tsang in order to abbreviate the "angry/scary" emoticon . \/. (which is composed of two inverted slashes and two periods) for convenience. In general, these emoticons do not fall into any particular subcatergory of emoticons.

Examples:

• XD
• >3<
• o_O
• T__T
• O. O
• ^. ^
• >. >"
• u_u
• -. -"

2channel style

The Japanese language is usually encoded using double-byte character codes. A byte (pronounced "bite" baɪt is the basic unit of measurement of information storage in Computer science. As a result there is a bigger variety of characters that can be used in emoticons, many of which cannot be reproduced in ASCII. American Standard Code for Information Interchange ( ASCII) Most kaomoji contain Cyrillic and other foreign letters to create even more complicated expressions analogous to ASCII art's level of complexity. The Cyrillic alphabet (səˈrɪlɪk also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters is actually a family of Alphabets, subsets of which are used by History Typewriter art Since 1867 typewriters have been used for creating visual art To type such emoticons, the input editor that is used to type Japanese on a user's system is equipped with a dictionary of emoticons, after which the user simply types the Japanese word (or something close to it) that represents the desired emoticon to convert the input into such complicated emoticons. Such expressions are known as Shift JIS art. Shift_JIS art is artwork created from characters within the Shift_JIS character set a superset of ASCII intended for Japanese usage

Users of 2channel in particular have developed a wide variety of unique emoticons using obscure characters. Some have taken on a life of their own and become characters in their own right, like Mona. >>1-san >>1-san ( >>1さん, ichisan) is a common Shift JIS art character on the popular Japanese BBS 2channel

Graphic emoticons

Graphic emoticons (small images that often automatically replace typed text) are commonly used instead of the older text variants, especially on Internet forums and instant messenger (IM) programs. An, or message board, is a Bulletin board system in the form of a discussion site These are often heavily animated, some taking up to at least a full five seconds to fully loop, and sometimes (mostly on IMs) with sound embedded, to bring it to full life.

Emotisounds

A portmanteau of emotion and sound, an emotisound is a brief sound transmitted and played back during the viewing of a message, typically an IM message or e-mail message. Sound' is Vibration transmitted through a Solid, Liquid, or Gas; particularly sound means those vibrations composed of Frequencies The sound is intended to communicate an emotional subtext. Subtext is content of a book play musical work film video game or television series which is not announced explicitly by the characters (or author but is implicit or becomes

Video EmotiClips

There has been a recent emergence of very short video clips, now referred to as EmotiClips that is a video snippet containing an expression of emotion. It can be shared on websites, in emails, and through mobile phone messaging to express feelings – not unlike a video greeting card. This new form of communication has been used recently by MTV and Paramount Home Entertainment to promote the arrival of MTV’s The Hills^[14]. MTV ( Music Television) is an American Cable television network based in New York City. Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American motion picture production and Distribution company, based in Hollywood California. This idea and design for EmotiClips were inspired by emoticons but created by an ad firm^[15].

Intellectual property rights related to emoticons

In 2000, Despair, Inc. obtained a U. Despair Inc is a company based in Austin Texas, that produces posters and Souvenirs that satirize the motivational indoctrination common S. trademark registration for the "frowny" emoticon :-( when used on "greeting cards, posters and art prints. A trademark or trade mark, represented by the symbols ™ and ®, or mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual " In 2001, they issued a satirical press release, announcing that they would sue Internet users who typed the frowny; the joke backfired and the company received a storm of protest when its mock release was posted at technology news website Slashdot. Slashdot, often abbreviated as /, is a technology-related news Website owned by SourceForge Inc ^[16]

Patented drop down menu for composing phone mail text message with emoticons. US patent 6987991

A number of patent applications have been filed on inventions that assist in communicating with emoticons. A patent application is a request pending at a Patent office for the grant of a Patent for the Invention described and claimed by that application A few of these have issued as US patents. A patent is a set of Exclusive rights granted by a State to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an US patent 6987991, for example, discloses a method developed in 2001 to send emoticons over a cell phone using a drop down menu. The advantage over the prior art was that the user saved on the number of keystrokes. Prior art (also known as or State of the art, which also has other meanings in most systems of Patent law constitutes all Information that

In Finland, the emoticons :-), =), =(, :) and :( were trademarked in 2006 for use with various products and services. A trademark or trade mark, represented by the symbols ™ and ®, or mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual ^[17]

See also

• Smiley
• Kaoani
• Emoji
• ASCII art
• Internet slang
• Hieroglyph
• List of common emoticons

References

Further reading

• Walther, J. B. , & D'Addario, K. P. (2001). "The impacts of emoticons on message interpretation in computer-mediated communication". Social Science Computer Review 19: 323–345.  
• Wolf, Peter. 2000. "Emotional Expression Online: Gender Differences in Emoticon Use. " CyberPsychology & Behavior 3: 827-833.

External links

History

• 1976: PLATO emoticons Character overstriking patterns
• 1982: The First Smiley :-) Mike Jones' article about Fahlman's CMU post (with his testimony) -
• 2007: 25 years of the smiley face Article charting the history of the emoticon and its 25th anniversary

Examples

• List of AOL messenger emoticons
• List of GTalk emoticons
• List of MSN messenger emoticons
• List of Yahoo messenger emoticons
• Insert smileys and other emoticons
• List of graphic emoticons
• List of MSN graphical emoticons

Japanese emoticons

• Anikaos Japanese Anime emoticons list
• 2-byte Japanese emoticons
• Article - A Guide to Anime Emoticons Western usage of kaomoji
• Koto Phone in Japan Flickr set - Example of default kaomoji on Japanese cell phone
• List of Microsoft Office Input Method Editor emoticons (Japanese)