Emoticon
An emoticon, also called a smiley, is a sequence of printable characters used to represent a human face and express an emotion. Emoticons that express happy or positive emotions are typically classified as smileys. Emoticons are a form of paralanguage commonly used in email messages, in bulletin boards, or in chat.Emoticon is a comparative neologism. It is a portmanteau word based on emotion and icon.
A similar portmanteau, verticon (based on vertical and icon), is sometimes used when referring to the Japanese style of emoticon.
| Table of contents |
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2 Purposes 3 Western style 4 Japanese style 5 First, Second and Third Generation of Emoticons 6 Face symbols in Unicode 7 See Also 8 External links |
In 1963 the smiley face, a yellow button with a smile
and two dots representing eyes, was invented by Harvey Ball.
Since this smiley face is not created with text characters, it's
not considered an emoticon, but it presumably inspired later emoticons.
Several sites on the Web (such as this one) assert that Kevin Mackenzie proposed "-)" as a joke marker in April 1979 on a message board called MsgGroup. The idea was to indicate that a message was intended tongue-in-cheek -- the hypen was a tongue, not a nose. Although it has two out of the three characters of the smiley, its intended interpretation was different and it doesn't appear to have inspired the later smileys.
The creator of the original ASCII emoticons ":-)" and ":-(", with a specific suggestion that they be used to express emotion, was Scott Fahlman; the original proposal made by Fahlman on CMU CS general board on September 19 1982 (at 11:44) was retrieved from old backup tapes on September 10 2002 by Jeff Baird.
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 Internet forum, emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images. In some versions of Microsoft Word, the AutoCorrect feature recognizes basic smilies such as :) and :(
The smile is represented with a basic smiley :-). The colon represents the eyes, the dash is for the nose, and the parenthesis is for the mouth.
This order is for the right-handed; left-handed smileys are turned the other way.
Often, the symbol for the nose is omitted, e.g. :). Also, the colon is replaced with the equal sign, e.g. =) (in which case the nose is always omitted, so one would never see =-) or similar).
The following examples all use the basic form, but each of them can be transformed to be rotated, to lose the dash and/or to replace the eyes symbol.
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 shift key.
A few people turn the smiley around, a "left handed" smiley (: This left-handed smiley can sometimes cause miscommunication though, since some hardcore netaddicts tend to drop the : representing the eyes [leaving ) instead of :) ] so what was intended to be a smile could be interpreted as a frown.
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.
These emoticons aren't rotated, they include the letter "o" for a human head, and slashes and backslashes for the arms.
The first generation emoticons were all sideways, such as :( and :) and even :D. The second generation were more elaborately horizontal, such as *<@:), The third generation are vertical, based on Japanese Anime style, such as ^_^.
Unicode includes several symbols that may be used as emoticons (although few people actually use them). See the table below:
History
The first known instance of using text characters to
represent a sideways smiling (and frowning) face
is in an ad in the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, 10 March 1953,
pg. 20, cols. 4-6.
The ad was for the film LILI, with the "delightful" Leslie Caron. It stated
that the "World Premiere Today" was at the Trans-Lux 52nd on Lexington.
The film opened nationwide, so this ad may have run in many newspapers.
The ad was as follows: Today\n\n You'll laugh :)\n You'll cry :(\n You'll love (Heart-shaped face)\n _Lili_
19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)\nFrom: Scott E Fahlman
Purposes
Emoticons have developed over the years as a replacement for facial expressions and emotions, as a way to cope with the limitations of being forced to communicate in text only, without misunderstandings due to the lack of information. Books have been written on this subject, with endless listings of a multitude of emoticons. Western style
To more easily recognise them, put your head on either your left or right shoulder, depending on whether the "top" of the emoticon is on the left or the right.Basic examples
:-) smile
:-( frown: sadness or sympathy
:-/ somewhat unhappy/discontent
:-| serious
;-) wink
:-> a smug grin
:'-( or :'-) shedding a tear
:-D wide grin
:-P or :-p tongue sticking out: joke or sarcasm
B-) or 8-) has (sun)glasses: looking cool
:-o or :-O expresses surprise
:-7 tongue in cheek (rare)
:-9 licking one's lips (fairly rare)
:-* puckered lips: a kiss
:-x "I shouldn't have said that"
X-D laugh
:-\\/ big mouth (rare)
d:-) baseball cap
Variants
There are endless possibilities, because people are very good at creating and interpreting pictures as faces. See ASCII art.Detailed emoticons
=8-0 fright
=8-@=(&) one with a tapeworm
(credited to Dave Barry)
d:^) baseball player
+-<:-) The pope
*<|:o)> or Santa Claus
*<|:{ )
7:^] Ronald Reagan
@@@@:^) Marge Simpson
(_8(V) or Homer Simpson
(_8(I)
Head and hands emoticons
o/ or \\o waving
o\\ or /o scratching one's head
/o\\ despair
\\o/ joy
Japanese style
Some users from East Asia, North America and Europe also use verticons, which can be understood without turning one's head to the left. These are usually in the format of *_*, where the asterisks indicate the eyes, and the central character, usually an underscore, is the mouth. When a period is used for the mouth, it is often meant to make the person look cuter, especially for women. The mouth can also be left out entirely. The Japanese language is usually encoded using double-byte character codes. As a result there is a bigger variety of characters that can be used in emoticons, many of which cannot be reproduced in ASCII.Basic examples
^_^ or ^.^ smiley
~_~ or ~.~ content
`_^ or `.^ or 、_^ wink
>_< or >.< angry
^o^ excited
\\^o^/ very excited (raising hands into the air)
*_* or *.* starry eyed (amazed)
-_- or -.- annoyed (trying to hide annoyance)
ì_ì or ì.ì focused at a particular person
;_; or ;.; crying
T_T or T.T flowing tears
o_O or O_o or O.o or o.O confused surprise (one eye raised)
O_O or O.O big surprise
o.o or o_o blank stare
@_@ or @.@ confused
Complex examples
=^.^= blushing, or a cat face (mischievous)
<<@_@>> drunk with vertigo
...~*.*~... girl with braids
~~~~>_<~~~~ weeping horribly
^_^; or ^.^; small sweatdrop (embarrassed)
^_^U or ^.^U huge sweat drop (anime-like)
^_^a scratching head
/*^_^*\\ or /ð^_^ð\\ Sailor Moon
/c|^_\\\\\\ bishounen
<(ì_ì)> focused at a particular person with ear-phones
dì_ìp focused at a particular person with ear-shields gits
Kirby series
Q(''Q) Boxing Kirby
O-(''Q) Kirby taking a punch
O*'Q) Kirby blocking
q('') Thumbs down Kirby
('')b Thumbs up Kirby
<^>('.')<^> Kirby giving the two Middle finger Salute
<(^ ^)> Happy Kirby
(* *) or (x x) Dead Kirby
<(o 0)> Confused Kirby
t(''t) Kirby giving the Middle finger
<(''<)<('')>(>'')> Dancing Kirby
Other
<3 Heart shape ( ♥ )
<333 Same as previous, but with emphasis
>< Angry Cartman, from Southpark
First, Second and Third Generation of Emoticons
Face symbols in Unicode
| name | character | codepoint |
|---|---|---|
| white frowning face | ☹ | U+2639 |
| white smiling face | ☺ | U+263A |
| black smiling face | ☻ | U+263B |
External links
Japanese emoticons