Emoticon

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For the use of emoticons on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Emoticons.

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An emoticon (pronounced (IPA) [iˈmoʊtɪkɑn]) is a small piece of specialized ASCII art (usually two to five characters, always on a single line) used in text messages as informal markup to indicate emotions and attitudes that would be conveyed by body language in face-to-face communications. They are intended to be relatively simple to type, easy to recognize, and most commonly represent stylized facial expressions although occasionally other representations or imagery are also used.

With the advent of richer media in modern instant messaging and sophisticated web-based BBS systems these are often replaced in the display by a small graphic image (usually based on the generic smiley, although other evocative imagery such as hearts are also used).

Some users also use pseudo-html (<g> for "grin" or <rant> ... </rant> to mark appropriate sections) and BBSs that use BBCode have their own alternative markup for inserting graphic emoticons (:sad: :shocked: etc.) which can also be read as text markup on non-graphical browsers such as Lynx.

Emoticons developed as a form of paralanguage used as extended interpunction symbols in e-mail, instant messaging, online chat, bulletin board systems, and Internet forums where communication is rapid, and the lack of context in purely textual communications could lead to even simple statements being easily misinterpreted.

Often a smile is represented with a basic smiley :-). The colon represents the eyes, the hyphen is for the nose, and the parenthesis 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).There are also such smilies as X ) and 8 ) This is also used to make figures, objects and animals.

[edit] Etymology

The word "emoticon" is, according to popular etymology, a blend of "emotion" and "icon". A similar word, "verticon" (from "vertical" and "icon"), is sometimes used when referring to the East Asian style of emoticon (i.e., the symbols represent a face that is vertically, rather than horizontally oriented).

[edit] Background

Further information: Harvey Ball, smiley

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".^[3]

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.

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." That interview has been reprinted in the collection of interviews and editorials by Nabokov.^[5]

[edit] 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 doesn't appear to have inspired the later smileys.

[edit] 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 <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>

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
        
:-(

[edit] 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.^[8]

Emoticons are also commonly used in online computer games.

[edit] 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).

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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  :)^{[citation needed]}] 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).

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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 oO. 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. Many other characters can be appended to also indicate arms or hands, e.g. <(^_^)> or ⊂( ﾟ ヮﾟ)⊃.

Microsoft IME 2003 (Japanese) or later supports the use of both forms of emoticons by enabling Microsoft IME Spoken Language Dictionary.

[edit] Simple examples

[edit] Complex examples

[edit] 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 <(^_^)>, 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Basic examples

[edit] 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.

[edit] Examples

	congratulate		confident		confused		crying		deep trouble		friendly
	grossed out		hurt		innocent		hysterical		indifferent		mocking
	nasty		odd, crazy, etc.		sad		shocked		skeptical
	smile		smirking		upset		very sorry		yawning

[edit] Animated examples

[edit] Emoticons in Unicode

In Unicode, following code points contain emoticons: U+2639(☹), U+263A(☺), U+263B(☻).

[edit] Patents related to emoticons

Patented drop down menu for composing phone mail text message with emoticons. US patent 6987991

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. US patent 6987991, for example, disloses 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.

[edit] See also

• Smiley
• Kaoani
• Emoji
• ASCII art
• Internet slang
• Hieroglyph
• Dancing Banana

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Walther, J. B., & D'Addario, K. P. (2001). "The impacts of emoticons on message interpretation in computer-mediated communication". Social Science Computer Review 19: 323–345. 

[edit] History

• 1976: PLATO emoticons Character overstriking patterns
• 1982: The First Smiley :-) Mike Jones' article about Fahlman's CMU post (with his testimony)

[edit] Examples

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Smilies

• List of AOL messenger emoticons
• List of GTalk emoticons
• List of MSN messenger emoticons
• List of Yahoo messenger emoticons
• Insert smileys and other emoticons
• List of Microsoft Office Input Method Editor emoticons (Japanese)

[edit] Asian emoticons

• Asian Emoticons explained

[edit] Japanese emoticons

• Anikaos Japanese Anime emoticons list
• 2-byte Japanese emoticons
• AA (Japanese ASCII art) underground thread @ hiding place (English version)
• Article - A Guide to Anime Emoticons Western usage of kaomoji
• Koto Phone in Japan Flickr set - Example of default kaomoji on Japanese cell phone