JargonFile/entries/emoticon.txt

emoticon

/eemohtikon/ , n. [common] An ASCII glyph used to indicate an emotional
state in email or news. Although originally intended mostly as jokes,
emoticons (or some other explicit humor indication) are virtually required
under certain circumstances in high-volume text-only communication forums
such as Usenet; the lack of verbal and visual cues can otherwise cause what
were intended to be humorous, sarcastic, ironic, or otherwise
non-100%-serious comments to be badly misinterpreted (not always even by
newbie s), resulting in arguments and flame war s. Hundreds of emoticons
have been proposed, but only a few are in common use. These include: :-)
smiley face (for humor, laughter, friendliness, occasionally sarcasm) :-(
frowney face (for sadness, anger, or upset) ;-) half-smiley ( ha ha only
serious ); also known as semi-smiley or winkey face. :-/ wry face (These may
become more comprehensible if you tilt your head sideways, to the left.) The
first two listed are by far the most frequently encountered. Hyphenless
forms of them are common on CompuServe, GEnie, and BIX; see also bixie. On
Usenet , smiley is often used as a generic term synonymous with emoticon ,
as well as specifically for the happy-face emoticon. The invention of the
original smiley and frowney emoticons is generally credited to Scott Fahlman
at CMU in 1982. He later wrote: I wish I had saved the original post, or at
least recorded the date for posterity, but I had no idea that I was starting
something that would soon pollute all the world's communication channels. In
September 2002 the original post was recovered. There is a rival claim by
one Kevin McKenzie, who seems to have proposed the smiley on the MsgGroup
mailing list, April 12 1979. It seems likely these two inventions were
independent. Users of the PLATO educational system report using emoticons
composed from overlaid dot-matrix graphics in the 1970s.