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An emoticon, also called a smiley, is a sequence of ordinary printable characters, such as :-), ;o), ^_^ or :-(, or a small image, intended to represent a human facial expression and convey an emotion. Emoticons are a form of paralanguage commonly used in e-mail messages, in online bulletin boards, online forums, instant messengers, or in chat rooms; without them simple statements could be misinterpreted. Sometime during 1981, Scott Fahlman (now a Principle Research Scientist in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University), devised a scheme for encoding and conveying one's feelings in small text "glyphs" to overcome this frustration. The word emoticon is a portmanteau which popular etymology bases on emotion and icon. A similar portmanteau, verticon (based on vertical and (i?)con), is sometimes used when referring to the East Asian style of emoticon.
The smile is represented with a basic smiley :-). The colon represents the eyes, the hyphen is for the nose, and the parenthesis is for the mouth.
Many variants exist with different symbols substituted for the basic ones. The symbol for the nose is often omitted, for example :) or ;). When the colon is replaced with the equals sign, =), the nose is almost always omitted (so one would not see =-), for example). This is also used to make figures, objects and animals, in other words an art-form.
History
Background
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 later emoticons; the most basic graphic emoticon depicts in fact a small, yellow, smiley face.
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 April 16, 1969 New York Times interview taken by Alden Whitman, he 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". That interview has been reprinted in the collection of interviews and editorials by Nabokov, "Strong Opinions" (ISBN: 0679726098)
Several Internet websites —such as Connected Earth— 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 doesn't appear to have inspired the later smileys.
Every issue of the British fashion magazine i-D, founded in 1980, has featured a cover model with a winking right eye (or sometimes obscured in a different way).
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 September 19 1982 (11:44), was considered lost for a long time. It was however recovered twenty years later (September 10, 2002) by Jeff Baird, from old backup tapes.See Fahlman's website for a reconstruction of the entire threadInternet usage
In Internet 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. *
Emoticons are also commonly used in online computer games.
Purposes
Emoticons have developed over the years as a replacement for facial expressions and other emotional cues lacking in text-only communication; the goal is to avoid misunderstandings due to the lack of contextual information. Many books have been written on this subject, with voluminous listings of emoticons.
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 towards your left shoulder (or occasionally towards your right shoulder if the "top" of the emoticon is towards the right). The smile is represented with a basic smiley :-). The colon represents the eyes, the hyphen is for the nose, and the parenthesis is for the mouth.
Many variants exist with different symbols substituted for the basic ones. The symbol for the nose is often omitted, for example :) or ;). When the colon is replaced with the equals sign, =), the nose is almost always omitted (so one would not see =-), for example).
Basic examples
The following examples all use a consistent form, but each of them can also be transformed by being rotated, having the hyphen omitted, and/or by replacing the eyes symbol. 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 *. Please note that the definitions for the following examples are not absolute definitions rather a general idea of their meaning.| :) or :-) | smile |
| :-)) | Really happy |
| :( or :-( or :< | frown |
| X-P or X-p | knocked out or dead, or strangely joking |
| :-] | polite smile, or sometimes a complimented blush |
| @=) | falling university tomorrow initiation |
| :-[ | another frown, or sometimes an embarrassed blush |
| :-# | Braces |
| :-/ or :-\ | skepticism, annoyance, uneasiness, or a slight frown; dissatisfaction, lack of favourable opinion on the subject, undecided |
| :- | :- >") |
| ;-) or ;) or !-) or ;-p | wink |
| :* | kiss |
| :-D or :D | wide grin, happy smile |
| :-P or :-p or :P or :-r or :-þ | tongue sticking out; used to convey a joke, light-hearted sarcasm, inappropriateness, or a light hearted groan, as in "Ugh". Many users still interpret this as a raspberry-sound, especially long-time users of emoticons. |
| B-) or 8-) | wearing glasses (usually interpreted as sunglasses) |
| :-o or :-O or :-0 or :O | surprise, shock |
| :S or :-s or :-S | confusion, incoherent |
| c-oo or c-ol | cool sunglasses |
| :-8 or :-B or :-F | buck teeth |
| :-x | sealed lips; used to convey "I shouldn't have said that" or sometimes shocked silence; can be taken to mean "no comment" |
| :-9 or :-6 | licking lips or someone using a whistle |
| :'-( or :_( or :*( or :…( or ;_; or ;0; | shedding a tear |
| >:o or >:O or :@ | Angry/Yelling |
| >:( or >=( | Angry/Grumpy |
| ;p | Wink Razz |
| :o) | clown face, can mean tongue-in-cheek |
| ;-^) | tongue-in-cheek |
| };-> or >:-) or }:-) or >:D or >:P | eyebrows or horns; evil, being mean, a devil |
| }:=3) or }:=8) | a dragon (smile version), complete with horns and snout |
| 0:-) | halo over the head, an angel, innocence |
| XD or xD | childish laugh, or laughing really hard |
| D-: or D: | horror (read right to left) |
| :V | mouth opened comically wide (in some communities, e.g. Ragnarok Online, it is considered a duck) |
| :-t | angry |
| (.)(.) | boobs |
| :-> | grin |
| :*) | blush; (sometimes used to illustrate "drunk") |
| :-)* | kiss 2 |
| :^o | liar liar |
| :-& | tongue-tied |
| :-{D | mustache |
| >:o~ | Devil with goatee |
| ;( | Sad wink/Crying |
| (:3= | Walrus |
| :3 | Sign of cuteness, a kitty face (curiosity), or "buttface" |
| ;-) or :> or ;> | witty, or pleased |
| >D or >) | Evil |
| >( or D< "or" >P | Mad, Furious |
| .!.. or _ | the middle finger |
| :J | variation of the typical smiling face |
| <3 | "heart" as in "I <3 U"; sometimes parodically extended to "<33333" or replaced with "less-than-three" |
| <8 | "heart" as in "I <8 you" but shows infinite love. This maintains the heart shape and also maintains a similarity between 8 and the infinity symbol. |
| a broken heart, often used alone | |
| <# | "hate" as in "I <# you" (the # symbol shares the 3 key on some keyboard layouts) |
| (_l_) or (_x_) or (_o_) or ( Y ) | a butt |
| 3^o | Tubgirl |
| (_>@<_) or E(_O_)3 or E@3 or /-{ }-\ | Goatse |
| ( @ ) ( @ ) or (oYo) or (.).) or (.)(.) or (.Y.) | breasts |
| (()) or ({;}) or ///<.>\\\ | vagina |
| (i) | vulva |
8D or <=3 | penis and testicles |
| ~° | sperm |
| "take a seat" | |
| \_ | "recline it" (stronger form of "take a seat") |
| _ _ | "full recline" (strongest form of "take a seat") |
| orz or OTL or OTZ | a person facing left and crouching on hands and knees with their head on the floor. May denotes despair, worship, or intense laughter. |
| ^5 | high five |
| %-} | amused |
| \-o | bored |
| 0:) | angel |
| :Q | what? |
| :'-) | crying with joy |
| :-* | oops |
| 8) | froggy, sometimes toad |
| :() | can't stop talking |
| (: | egg head |
| 8- | nerd |
| :,( | crying |
| :-6 | exhausted |
| yawning | |
| :-@ | screaming |
| hee hee | |
| %-) | confused |
| :-)(-: | married |
| :-{} | blowing a kiss |
| ~:-0 | baby |
| :-V | shouting |
| :-/ | uncertain, disappointed |
| (\:=) | Hitler |
| -): | Picasso, also sometimes displayed as -)" or simply "-) |
| -* | Contradiction |
| <°)))>< | Goldfish |
| <("<) | Kirby |
| >:3 | JESUS CHRIST! It's a lion! Get in the car! |
Variants
There are endless possibilities, because people are very good at creating and interpreting pictures as faces. See ASCII art.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.
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 ) instead of :) so what was intended to be a smile could be interpreted as a frown.
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 alarmed).
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).
Head and hands emoticons
Some of these emoticons aren't rotated, they include the letter "o" for a human head, and slashes and backslashes for the arms.| o/ _o/ .o/ | waving with or raising the left hand (person facing you) |
| \o \o_ \o. | waving with or raising the right hand (person facing you); this is sometimes used to mimic a Nazi salute |
| /o | scratching one's head |
| /o\ or | despair, cowering |
| \o/ | joy, note that \m/ and \,,/ is "METAL" |
| dancing | |
| fencing
| |
| jumping, diving | |
| o7 | saluting |
| *\o/* | cheerleader |
| | honor |
| /=O=\ | goatse |
| mlln | Middle finger |
Posture emoticons
orz (sometimes seen as OTL Or2, On_, OTZ, O7Z, Sto, Jto, _no, _|￣|○) spawned a subculture in late 2004.* 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 use the pictograph to show that they have failed and/or they are in despair, some people, in Taiwan, use it to show that they laugh a lot so that they kneel down. It is not read phonetically, the letters are spelled out. 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," "I'd like to be your friend," etc., à la "nice guy syndrome".
On imageboards, it has been used not only for failure and despair, but also as a symbol for the kowtow, illustrating instead a person bowing down in worship of a certain picture that was posted.
Handicons
Recently developed are "handicons" to represent hand gestures. They can be seen either right or left-handed (the examples below are shown from the perspective of facing a right-handed gesture). Many variantions use "." as a knuckle instead of "n" or "m". For the other hand, one simply reverses the order of the line and switches the knuckle (< for left, > for right).
| The Peace sign
| |
| <\V/ or \V/_ | The Vulcan (Star Trek), Vulcan salute or "live long and prosper" |
East Asian style
Users from East Asia (particularly Japanese language speakers those who visit 2channel) popularized a style of emoticons known as , which can be understood without turning one's head to the left. These styles of faces roughly resemble the style commonly found in Japanese anime and manga comic books.
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. o.o . A quotation mark ", apostrophe ', or semicolon ; can be appended to the emoticon to imply apprehension or embarrassment, à la the anime sweat drop. Many other characters can be appended to also indicate arms or hands, e.g. <(^_^)> or ⊂( ﾟ ヮﾟ)⊃.
Basic examples
| (^_^) or (^-^) or (^ ^) | smiley |
| (`_^) or (^_~) | wink |
| (>_<) or (>.<) | pretending to be cute, or pain, or frustration |
| (<_>) | sad |
| (^o^) | singing, or laughing maniacally |
| t(-_-t) | flipping the bird |
| \(^o^)/ | very excited (raising hands) |
| (-_-) or (~_~) or (=_=) | annoyance, resignation, or sleeping (eyes shut), grumpy |
| (-_-;) or (^_^') or (^_^);; or ^_^" | nervousness, or sweatdrop (embarrassed; semicolon can be repeated) |
| (-_-#) or (-_-¤) | vein (used to show frustration) |
| (¬_¬) | eyeing something or someone, or otherwise glaring, sometimes used as an expression of rolling one's eyes |
| (<_<) or (>_>) or (c_c) | skepticism, looking around suspiciously |
| (;_;) or (T_T) or (ToT) | crying |
| (@_@) | dazed |
| `(•.°)~ | druggy, trippin' |
| (o_O) | confused surprise, disturbed |
| (0_<) | flinch, nervous wink |
| (O_O) | shocked, surprise buttsecks (also O.o - one eye smaller than the other) |
| (._.) | intimidated, sad, ashamed |
| ($_$) | money eyes; thinking about money ( also sometimes changeable to other currency symbols such as (¥_¥) ) |
| (x_x) or (+_+) | dead, exhausted or knocked out; giving up, lost, confused |
| (n_n) | happy, pleased |
| (u_u) | annoyance, sarcasm, sometimes disappointment |
| (9_9) | rolling eyes |
| (e_e) | mischief, distrust |
| (e_o) or (o_e) | eye twitching |
| (*_*) | star-struck |
| (",) | smirk |
| ("o) | side shocked |
| (-.-)zzZ or -_-zzZ | sleeping |
| (o)_(o) | alternative for tired; sometimes used to illustrate crazed |
| ;o; or ;O; | crying loudly/shouting |
| T_T or TT_TT or Y_Y or TToTT or T^T | exaggerated crying, so that the eyes are closed and tears stream down the face |
| I_I | "What?", mellow |
Complex examples
| (ô ô) | boy (sometimes also used to indicate surprise) |
| (ö ö) | girl |
| (ó ò) | surprised, scared |
| (ò ó) | angry |
| (ó ô) | quizzical or "Indeed" (designed to mimic Star Trek's Mr. Spock) |
| (╥_─) | annoyed, hiding frustration, dread |
| =^_^= | blushing, or a cat face (mischievous) |
| -^_^- | blushing |
| fO_o | scratching head |
| ^n_n^ | catgirl or boy |
| d-_-b | listening to music, labeling title afterwards |
| | weeping horribly |
| <(^_^)>,(>^_^)>, etc. | dancing, especially used to specifically show Kirby dancing |
| (>^_^)> <(^_^<) | hugging |
| (>^(>O_o)> | sexual intercourse, normally used to depict rape and/or anal sex (extensible), commonly referred to as surprise buttsecks. |
| ( ~^_^)~ | dancing |
| (9ò_ó)-o | fighting, throwing a punch |
| /¯\_/°^_^°\_/¯\ | Sailor Moon (extensible) |
| w-('u')-w | Kilroy was here (extensible) |
| p(^o^)q | good luck |
| b(~_^)b | thumbs-up |
| p(-_-)p | thumbs-down |
| t(-_-t) or ,,l,(>.<),l,, | flipping off |
| (^^ .)\\// | giving the V-sign |
| m <(~_~)> m | kitten |
| \m/>_<\m/ | rockin' out |
| \,,/(^_^)\,,/ | happy rockin' |
| (¬_¬)/¯ | "It's good... to go!" |
| \0-0/ | wearing glasses (nerd) |
| Q_Q or QQ | 2 eyes crying. |
| ¯\(º_o)/¯ | confused, shrug or surprise buttsecks. often appears with the phrase "iunno lol". |
| (ρ_-)o | sleepy / rubbing eyes |
| ʄ σ,..,σ ʄ | ghost |
| ( ._.)ø | writing |
| (._.) | Sometimes used in place of (o.o); used as shock or confusion. (.-.) is just the upside down version of this emoticon |
| (__O__)'_' | Tubgirl. |
Western use of East Asian style
English anime forums adopted kaomoji 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 net. They have since seen use in more mainstream venues, including online gaming, instant-messaging, and other non-anime related forums. Emoticons such as <(^_^)>, 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.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.
Basic examples
| (`ヘ´) | annoyed |
| （´・ω・｀） | deflated |
| （ ´Д｀） | yelling, or panting |
| （ ﾟДﾟ） | surprised, or loudmouthed |
| ┐('～`；)┌ | don't know the answer |
| （´∀｀） | carefree |
| （ ´_ゝ`） | indifferent |
| Σ(゜д゜;) | shocked |
| ( ﾟ ヮﾟ) | happy, upbeat |
| (*´Д`) | heavy breathing |
| ＇へ＇凸 | flipping someone the bird |
| ╮(─▽─)╭ | "who cares?" |
| ｷﾀ━━━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━━━!!!!! | "It's here", a general expression of excitement that something has appeared or happened. |
| (´・ω・)つ(・(・ | reaching for delicious cake, a common inside joke among online image board users. Also used more recently to mean "kneading tits". |
Graphic emoticons
Graphic emoticons (small images that often automatically replaced typed text) are commonly used instead of the older text variants, especially on Internet forums and instant messenger programs. These are ofen heavily animated, some taking up to at least a full five seconds to fully loop, and sometimes (mostly on instant messengers) with sound embedded in, to bring it to full life.
Examples
| crying |
| confused |
| sad |
| shocked |
| smile |
| odd, crazy, etc. |
Emotext
EmotextGender, Pseudonyms, and CMC: Masking Identities and Baring Souls Paper submitted for presentation to the 45th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, 1995, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA (CMC is 'Computer Mediated Conversation) is closely related to emoticons in that text is distorted in order to create emphasis. Such distortion may also include classic emoticons. It should not be confused with acronyms such as 'IANAL' (I am not a lawyer). While examples may feel trivial at first sight, they are used in chat or similar online conversations to emphasise the emotion or conversation element.
Examples are:
- 'soooooo good' (empahsis on 'so')
- 'wowwwwwww' (attempt to emphasise the sound of 'wow')
Additionally text may be duplicated, again for emphasis:
- 'yup yup' (vernacular for 'yes', said twice, signifying simple agreement, and carrying less power than a simple 'yes')
See also
Notes
External links
History
- 1976: PLATO emoticons Character overstriking patterns
- 1982: The First Smiley :-) Mike Jones' article about Fahlman's CMU post (with his testimony)
- 1982: Smiley Lore :-) by Scott E. Fahlman
Examples
Japanese emoticons
- Anikaos Japanese Anime emoticons list
- Japanese/anime emoticons list
- 2-byte Japanese emoticons
- AA(Japanese ASCII art) underground thread @ hiding place (English version)
Other
- Smiley :-) article - extensive article about Smiley :-)
ASCII art | Computing portmanteaus | Internet culture | On-line chat
Емотикон | Emotikon | Emoticon | Emoticon | Emoticono | Miensimbolo | Sentikur | Emoticon | 이모티콘 | Emoticone | Emoticon | רגשונים | Šypsenėlė | Emotikon | Emoticon | 顔文字 | Uttrykksikon | Emotikon | Emoticon | Смайлик | Hymiö | Uttryckssymbol | อีโมติคอน | 表情符号
Емотикон | Emotikon | Emoticon | Emoticon | Emoticono | Miensimbolo | Sentikur | Emoticon | Cariña | 이모티콘 | Emoticone | Emoticon | רגשונים | Šypsenėlė | Emotikon | Emoticon | 顔文字 | Uttrykksikon | Emotikon | Emoticon | Смайлик | Hymiö | Uttryckssymbol | อีโมติคอน | 表情符号
"Emoticon"
