Emoticons are also known as smileys. Emoticon is make from the words emotion and icon. Emoticon is a graphic icon that expresses an emotion. Emoticons adds colour to a plain text message, which makes conversation interesting and lively.
Emoticons are able to express happiness, anger, sadness, surprise, boredom, and many more feelings. Text Emoticons can be created using ASCII characters with an input device as keypad and keyboard. The characters used to create emoticons are commonly punctuation marks resembling a real facial expression. Since its introduction in text messages, text emoticons have had many designs and variations. It has become an art in a sense.
These are the most common emoticons and punctuation marks using:
) – A smile is represented by using closed bracket.
: – The eyes are represented by using colon.
:) – A smiley face is represented by using bracket and colon simultaneously.
:-) – A nose is represented by using colon and bracket with a dash in between.
;-) – A wink is represented by using combination of semi colon, dash and close bracket.
0 ;-) – Add zero before wink to create an emoticon with a halo.
8-) – Adding digit eight before emoticon will create an emoticon with sunglasses.
:-( – A frowning face representing sadness can be created by using open bracket in place of closed.
:-D – Add alphabet D to create the happy and laughing emoticon.
:-O – The alphabet o can be added at the end of emoticon to convey the feeling of surprised.
The discovery of the creation of :-) and :-( as a symbol of emotion with the ASCII character set is made by Scott Fahlman in a document at Carnegie Mellon University, on 19 September 1982. The document was misplaces but was recovered later by Jeff Baird, after 20 years.
The discovery has made its way to the present with the existence of modern technology. With the rapid development of mobile technology, the characteristics of the latest models now allow users to send a bunch of emoticons that are graphically done.
Most commonly used emoticon is yellow with a black dotted circles eyes. Modern cell phones comes with pre inserted emoticons and comes as a bundled feature. With this improvement, cell phone users now have several options to send emoticons, as well as the traditional use of alphanumeric characters to represent emoticons or smileys.
Text messaging has become exciting and fun with the use of emoticons and smileys. You may have better ways to send your messages with a more personalized touch. You can easily create emoticons to your taste using your creativity.
You can send a smile to a friend or family member using the smiley faces emoticons. It brings joy and laughter with jokes that include a smiling face. If you wish, just send a smiley and it will be understood by everyone who receives it. Emoticons have changed the way we communicate. It had become more intimate and personal.
Get over 10000 emoticons now for your everyday use. The emoticons works with Email, Forums, Blogs, social networks like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter etc and instant messengers like MSN, Skype, Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger etc.