Term: Emoticon

What is an emoticon?

An emoticon consists of a combination of keyboard characters that are typed together. They are mostly utilized to express moods, feelings or emotions. According to Wikipedia, emoticons appear to have originated from the 19th century as a form of a casual or humorous writing communication style. Emoticons first appeared on the Internet around the early 1980s and has quickly become popular in its usage.

Are there any examples?

Common examples of emoticons include:

• : ) or : – ) which means a smile
• : D or :  – D which means a laugh
• : ( or  : – ( which means a frown
• ; ) or ; – ) which means a wink
• : ? or : – ? which means confused
• : x or : – x which means angry/mad

Usage of the previously mentioned emoticons will show up as 🙂 , :D, :(, ;-), 😕 and 😡 respectively. Find more examples of emoticons.

So how can I use an emoticon?

Emoticons are popular with online chat, instant messaging or social networking mediums such as Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Google Talk or AIM. One may even use emoticons on forums and blogs.  In the screenshots below, Yahoo’s instant messenger chat client allows for the usage of emoticons in addition to text:

As can clearly be seen from the above screenshots, the use of emoticons can easily enhance any online chat session.

Recent technology advancements now allow for it to be optional for one to memorize an emoticon’s keyboard combination. Emoticons are now built into the chat interface allowing one to readily select the desired equivalent of a manually entered emoticon. The screenshot below shows this functionality in Yahoo’s instant messenger chat client:

Any interesting facts?

• In 2004, a team from the digital archival company Proquest stumbled across what could be an even older example of an emoticon in print … in the transcription of a 1862 speech by President Lincoln
• Emoticons have geographical styles. There are western emoticons and eastern emoticons. Western ones are read sideways (from left to right) whereas eastern style emoticons are read upright.