the.com/emoticon
Proof that humans will torture punctuation until it smiles back.
means A face or feeling built from keyboard characters—like :-) or :-(—used to add tone or emotion to plain text.
from A 1980s blend of "emotion" and "icon," coined as people typing on early computer networks realized that flat text swallowed sarcasm and warmth alike. The sideways smiley :-) is usually credited to a 1982 message by computer scientist Scott Fahlman, proposing it to mark jokes on a Carnegie Mellon bulletin board. The word "emoticon" itself followed to name the whole tribe of these tilted glyph-faces—later upstaged by the picture-based "emoji," a separate Japanese word that only sounds like a cousin.
- first use
- Scott Fahlman proposed :-) in 1982 on a message board
- eastern style
- Japanese kaomoji read upright, no head-tilt required
- older than computers
- An 1880s magazine printed typographic faces as a joke
- emoji split
- Emoji are pictures; emoticons are punctuation pretending to be
- nose optional
- The great :) versus :-) divide still sparks arguments
smiley face — created by scott fahlman at carnegie mellon in 1982 as :- ) to indicate jokes in text
tears of joy emoji — oxford dictionaries' word of the year in 2015, most used emoji globally