The idea of codifying emotional content in written or message form is 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
Morse code abbreviations are more succinct than modern abbreviations such as
LOL.
[1][2]
In 1912
Ambrose Bierce proposed "an improvement in punctuation — the snigger point, or note of cachinnation: it is written thus ___/! 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".
[1]
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.
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. 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 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 many later emoticons; the most basic graphic emoticon depicts 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."
[5]
Proto-emoticons
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.
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. 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 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; 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. It was however recovered twenty years later by
Jeff Baird, from old backup tapes.
[7]
| 19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)From: Scott E Fahlman I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to markthings that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-( |
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.
[1]
Emoticons are also commonly used in online computer games.
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 :) : Smile or Happy
[7]
:
:-( or :( : Frown or Sad
[7]
:
:-D or :D : Open-mouthed smile - a grin, often denoting laughter
:
:-p or :p : Smile with tongue out - used to denote either a "raspberry" or being 'tongue in cheek' in English
:
:-S or :S : Confused Smile
:
:-/ or :/ or :- or : Blank Smile
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
[1]. 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.
[2] 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 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 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," 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.
East Asian style
Users from
East Asia popularized a style of emoticons that can be understood without turning one's head to the left.
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. 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). The emphasis on the eyes is reflected in the common usage of emoticons that use only the eyes, e.g. ^^. 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.g. {^_^}. Many times, the parentheses are left out completely, e.g. ^^ 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 as the anime
sweat drop. Sometimes smiley (^^) is missunderstood - people thinking it represents eyebrows. Many other characters can be appended to also indicate arms or hands, e.g.
<(^_^)> or ⊂( ﾟ ヮﾟ)⊃ or <(--<)
Microsoft IME 2003 (Japanese) or later supports the use of both forms of emoticons by enabling Microsoft IME Spoken Language 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. 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. 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. Occasionally emoticons will be strung together in series to show movement. For example: <(o_o<) (>o_o)> ^(o_o^) (^o_o)^ (^o_o)> <(o_o^)
2channel style
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. Most kaomoji contain
Cyrillic and other foreign letters to create even more complicated expressions analogous to
ASCII art's level of complexity. 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.
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.
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 programs. These are often heavily animated, some taking up to at least a full five seconds to fully loop, and sometimes (mostly on
instant messengers) with sound embedded, to bring it to full life.
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
[11]. This idea and design for EmotiClips were inspired by emoticons but created by an ad firm
[12].
Here is an example of a video emoticlip, used to display frustration.
Emoticons in Unicode
In
Unicode, the following code points contain emoticons: U+2639(
☹), U+263A(
☺),
U+263B(
☻).
Intellectual property rights related to emoticons
Patented drop down menu for composing phone mail text message with emoticons.
A number of
patent applications have been filed on inventions that assist in communicating with emoticons. A few of these have issued as US
patents. , 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.
In Finland, the emoticons :-), =), =(, :) and :( were
trademarked in 2006 for use with various products and services.
[13]
See also
★
Smiley
★
Kaoani
★
Emoji
★
ASCII art
★
Internet slang
★
Hieroglyph
★
Dancing Banana
★
List of common emoticons
References
1.
2. An Analysis of Nonverbal Communication in an Online Chat Group, Joan Gajadhar and John Green, , , EDUCAUSE Quarterly,
3.
4. Gregory Benford, ''A Scientist's Notebook: NET@FANDOM.COM'', The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Vol. 90, No. 6 (June 1996), p. 90
5. Strong Opinions, Nabokov, , , Vintage Books, , ISBN 0-679-72609-8
6. http://www.connected-earth.co.uk/Galleries/Frombuttonstobytes/ComputerNetworks/Thegrowthofe-mail/index.htm
7. See Fahlman's website for a reconstruction of the entire thread
8.
9. See Fahlman's website for a reconstruction of the entire thread
10. See Fahlman's website for a reconstruction of the entire thread
11. YouTube example of MTV clip
12. Adweek Article about Emoticlip
13. Tavaramerkkilehti, , , , Tavaramerkkilehti,
Further reading
★
The impacts of emoticons on message interpretation in computer-mediated communication, Walther, J. B., & D'Addario, K. P., , , Social Science Computer Review,
External links
History
★ 1976:
PLATO emoticons Character overstriking patterns
★ 1982:
The First Smiley :-) Mike Jones' article about Fahlman's CMU post (with his testimony)
Examples
★
Smiley Central
★
List of AOL messenger emoticons
★
List of GTalk emoticons
★
List of MSN messenger emoticons
★
List of Yahoo messenger emoticons
★
Insert smileys and other 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
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