EMOTICONS
author: Jana Nikolić
August 2005

translation into English: Danijela Tomazović
November 2009

emoticon=emotion+icon

Emoticon is a group of ASCII characters which represents human face and expresses some emotion. Emoticons expressing positive feelings are usually classified as smileys. It is a form of parallel language used in electronic mail, internet forums and chat. The inventor of original ASCII emoticons :-) and :-( is Scott Fahlmann. First Fahlmann's suggestion to CMU CS board made on September 19th 1982, at 11 o'clock and 44 minutes, was found on old backup tapes by Jeff Baird on September 10th 2002.

The oldest known not-ASCII emoticons were used as far as in 1972 in program PLATO IV which enabled the user to insert characters one above another. Many combinations of common characters creating the shapes similar to facial and used as emoticons are known.

Over time, emoticons turned into a replacement for facial and emotional expressions, as a way to replace limitations imposed by the textual communication and to avoid misunderstandings due to lack of information. Numerous books with this topic are written, with endless lists of many emoticons.

How broad their usage is speaks the fact that in some versions of Microsoft Office, AutoCorrect option recognizes basic smileys :-) and :-( and translates them into and .

Basic (first generation of emoticons)

:-) :) =) smile

:-( )-: :( frown, sadness or compassion

:/ unhappy, unsatisfied

:| serious

:-D :D large grin

:-P :p :9 tongue out, joke or sarcasm

;-) (-; ;) wink

B-) 8-) with eyeglasses

:-o :o :-O surprise

XD laughter

d:) d:-) with baseball hat

one of the most famous examples of applied smiley is i-D magazine logo (illustration 1). This magazine started to be published in August 1980 and covers fashion and popular culture in general.

Variations (second generation of emoticons)

=8-0 fear

d:^) baseball player

+-<:-) Pope

*<|:o)> Santa Clause

@@@@:^) Marge Simpson

(_8(I) Homer Simpson

:^) happy profile

<:-) stupid question

+<:-| message from the priest

{0-) message from the Cyclops

...---... S.O.S.

2B/X2B message related to Shakespeare

<<<<(:-) message from hat distributor

@>--->---- rose

.-) sender has one eye

:8) sender is a pig

If they are not rotated, western emoticons have letter “o” for head, and slash and backslash instead of arms:

o/ or \o waving

/o\ desperation

\o/ joy

East Asian (third variation of emoticons)

( ^ _ ^ )

Unlike first and second generation of emoticons, third generation of emoticons developed by Japanese is read as text.

more about Japanese emoticons >>>

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Information sources:
Wikipedia, the web encyclopedia
Emoticons, one Japanese's large collection

Theme: EMOTICONS
Japanesse emoticons
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