Title: Emoticon Content: An emoticon  is a written symbol, often as 2 or 3 punctuation characters, that stands for the writer's mood or facial expression. Some examples are: a smile ":-)" or wink ";-)" or frown ":(" or dog nose ":O" or le meme arrow ">" (see many other examples in text below). Emoticons are often used to tell a reader about the general tone of a statement, and can change or improve the reading of plain writing. Over the years, many kinds of emoticons have been created, and now there are hundreds of known emoticons. The word "emoticon" is a blend of the English words emotion (or emote) and icon. In web forums, instant messengers and online games, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small pictures, which came to be called emoticons as well. Certain complex character combinations can only be accomplished in a double- byte language, giving rise to very complex forms, sometimes known by their romanized Japanese name of kaomoji. The use of emoticons can be traced back to the 19th century, and they were commonly used in casual or humorous writing. In 1912, a smiling mouth (or snigger point) was shown in typewriter text as "\\___/!". Digital forms of emoticons on the Internet were written in an email during 1982.See Fahlman's website for a copy of the whole thread. ==History== ===Antecedents=== In April 1857, the National Telegraphic Review and Operators Guide wrote about the use of the number 73 in Morse code to mean "love and kisses" (later changed to "best regards"). A few years later, Dodge's Manual talked about a new way to show "love and kisses", the number 88. A New York Times transcript of an 1862 speech given by Abraham Lincoln contains ";)" (now known as a winky-face). There is some debate as to whether it is a typo, a legitimate form of punctuation, or an emoticon.Is That an Emoticon in 1862? - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com. Typographical emoticons were published in 1881 by the U.S. satirical magazine Puck. In 1912, Ambrose Bierce created something called a "snigger point". "It is written thus \\___/! and presents a smiling mouth." Emoticons had already come into use in sci-fi fandom in the 1940s,Gregory Benford, A Scientist's Notebook: net@fandom.com, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Vol. 90, No. 6 (June 1996), p. 90 although there seems to have been a lapse in cultural continuity between the communities. In 1963 the "smiley face", a yellow button with two black dots representing eyes and an upturned thick curve representing a mouth, was created by freelance artist Harvey Ball. This smiley probably inspired many later emoticons; the most basic picture that shows this is 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." ===Pre-1980 emoticons=== As early early as 1973 or earlier, teletype machine users used "emoticons" to express themselves. Teletypes were limited to the keys of a standard typewriter keyboard plus a few special characters. Teletype operators developed a sort of shorthand to communicate among themselves. These shorthand notations became the foundation of "emoticons" as video terminals began to replace teletypes in general use. By the early 1970s, people on the PLATO System were using emoticons. They had many of the advantages of later character-based emoticons because they could be used anywhere that you could type text. They also had many of the advantages of later graphical emoticons because they used character overstriking which created graphical images. Several Internet websites –such as BT's Connected Earth– assert that Kevin Mackenzie proposed `-)` as a joke-marker in April 1979, on the MsgGroup ARPANET mailing list. The idea was to indicate tongue-in-cheek, with the hyphen represented a tongue, not a nose: 15-Apr-79 12:05:26-PST,1142;000000000000 Mail-from: MIT-MC rcvd at 12-Apr-79 1740-PST Date: 12 APR 1979 1736-PST From: MACKENZIE at USC-ECL Subject: MSGGROUP#1015 METHICS and the Fast Draw(cont'd) To: ~drxal-had at OFFICE-1 cc: msggroup at MIT-MC, malasky at PARC-MAXC In regard to your message a few days ago concerning the loss of meaning in this medium: I am new here, and thus hesitate to comment, but I too have suffered from the lack of tone, gestures, facial expressions etc. May I suggest the beginning of a solution? Perhaps we could extend the set of punctuation we use, i.e: If I wish to indicate that a particular sentence is meant with tongue-in-cheek, I would write it so: "Of course you know I agree with all the current administration's policies -)." The "-)" indicates tongue-in-cheek. This idea is not mine, but stolen from a Reader's Digest article I read long ago on a completely different subject. I'm sure there are many other, better ways to improve our punctuation. Any comments? Kevin Others used `:-)` for tongue-in-cheek, with the colon representing teeth. Also used was `-:)` to indicate sticking out your tongue, in derision or anger. Although similar to a sideways smiling face, the intended interpretation was different and this does not appear to have inspired the later smileys. In the late sixties, the APL programming language and timesharing environment, with its rich character set with backspace and overstrike capability provided a fruitful arena for interactive and creative symbol invention. Union-backspace- dieresis (∪̈) was a recognised and upright smiley in the early seventies. ===Creation of :-) and :-(=== The first person documented to have used the emoticons `:-)` and `:-(`, with a specific suggestion that they be used to express emotion, was Scott Fahlman in the U.S. at Carnegie Mellon University; the text of his original proposal, posted to the Carnegie Mellon University computer science general board on 19 September 1982 (11:44), was thought to have been lost, but was recovered twenty years later by Jeff Baird from old backup tapes. 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 mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-( Within a few months, it had spread to the ARPANET (the early Internet) and Usenet. Many variations on the theme were immediately suggested by Scott and others. ===Graphical replacement=== In web forums, instant messengers and online games, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which also came to be called "Emoticons." 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. Emoticons have also expanded beyond simple cartoon facial expressions to a variety of still or moving images. 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. Many applications use text codes, which become replaced with a graphical emoticon. For example, :dance: or (dance) could be replaced with a graphical dancing emoticon. A web-forum software package which performed this transformation was Proxicom Forum, developed in 1996. 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. Many sites use GIF or PNG graphic files, because of their transparency and small file size capabilities. Files can be created using a raster graphics editor. Many emoticon artists design their emoticons pixel by pixel. Some emoticons are made in vector format, such as SVG, and automatically processed using a graphics library. This allows SVG files to be automatically rendered as a GIF or PNG file, which is compatible with most browsers, which SVG is not. ==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, emoticons have the eyes on the left, followed by the nose and mouth. To more easily recognize 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 western examples=== The most basic emoticons are relatively consistent in form, but each of them can also be transformed by being rotated (making them tiny ambigrams), with or a without hyphen (nose). There are also some possible variations to emoticons to get new definitions, like changing a character to express a new feeling, or slightly change the mood of the emoticon. For example, :( equals sad and :(( equals very sad or weeping. A :"> blush can be expressed as :"u blushing for you or a surprised blush, o///o . Others include wink ;) a grin :D smug :-> and tongue out :P for disgust or simply just to stick the tongue out for silliness, such as when blowing a raspberry. An often used combination is also <3 for a heart, and =O)` . In most circles it has become acceptable to omit the hyphen, whether a colon or an equal sign is used for the eyes, e.g. `:)` .Denoser strips noses from text In some areas of usage, people prefer the larger, more traditional emoticon `:-)` . 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. In some cases, one type of character may look better in a certain font and therefore be preferred over another. Some variants are also more common in certain countries because of reasons like keyboard layouts, for example the smiley `=)` is common in Scandinavia where the keys for `=` and `)` are placed right beside each other. Also, sometimes, the user can replace the brackets used for the mouth with other, similar shapes, such as `]` and `[` instead of `)` and `(` . Diacritical marks are sometimes used. An O or U with an umlaut, `Ö`, `Ü` can be seen as an emoticon, as the upright version of `:O` (meaning that one is surprised) and :D (meaning that one is very happy). nwn (Meaning one is super happy). ==Asian style== Users from East Asia popularized a style of emoticons that can be understood without tilting one's head to the left. This style arose on ASCII NET of Japan in 1986.The History of Smiley Marks (English) Similar looking emoticons were used by Byte Information Exchange (BIX) around the same time.Jargon file, version 2.6.1, February 12, 1991 These emoticons are usually found in a format similar to (*_*). The asterisks indicate the eyes; the central character, commonly an underscore, the mouth; and the parentheses, the outline of the face. Two separate studies, in 2007 at Hokkaido University and in 2009 at Glasgow University, showed that Japanese and other East Asians read facial expressions by looking mainly at the eyes, and the researchers noted that this is reflected in East Asian emoticons which put emphasis on the eyes, compared to Western emoticons which emote mainly with the mouth. Different emotions such as (")(-_-)("), are expressed by changing the character representing the eyes, for example ' T ' can be used to express crying or sadness (T_T). The emphasis on the eyes is reflected in the common usage of emoticons that use only the eyes, e.g. ^^. Looks of stress are represented by the likes of (x_x) while (-_-;) is a generic emote for nervousness, the semicolon indicating sweat that occurs during anxiety. Repeating the /// mark (///) can indicate embarrassment by symbolizing blushing. 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, O.O, <.<;, though this is more likely in Western culture. A quotation mark ", apostrophe ', or semicolon ; can be added to the emoticon to imply apprehension or embarrassment, in the same way that a sweat drop is used in anime. Microsoft IME 2002 (Japanese) or later supports the use of both forms of emoticons by enabling Microsoft IME Spoken Language Dictionary. In IME 2007, it was moved to Emoticons dictionary. Further variations of emoticons may be produced by using Combining characters, e.g. ̼⌂̺͛ᴖ̲̿ᴥ̲̿ᴖ̺͛⌂̼ and ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶ . ===Common eastern examples===  ||shifty, suspicious; could also be sarcasm or irritation||