# Emoticons

> Emoticons are text-based facial expressions created from punctuation marks like :) and :( by Scott Fahlman in 1982 to convey emotion in digital communication.

Emoticons are pictorial representations of facial expressions built from punctuation marks, letters, and keyboard characters. Pioneered on September 19, 1982, when computer scientist Scott Fahlman proposed:-) and:-( on a Carnegie Mellon University bulletin board, emoticons became the first widely adopted system for conveying tone and emotion in text-based digital communication. From Western sideways smileys to Japanese kaomoji, these typed-out faces shaped how billions of people express themselves online and laid the groundwork for modern emoji.

## Origin
The practice of using text symbols to express emotions has roots going back centuries. The National Telegraphic Review and Operators Guide documented in 1857 that Morse code operators used the number 73 to mean "love and kisses"[6]. In 1881, the humor magazine *Puck* published an article called "Typographical Art" featuring punctuation-based faces representing joy, melancholy, indifference, and astonishment[1]. American writer Ambrose Bierce proposed in 1912 that a horizontal bracket ‿ could represent "a smiling mouth," to be appended "to every jocular or ironical sentence"[6]. And in 1969, Vladimir Nabokov told The New York Times: "I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile, some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket"[7].

But none of these ideas ever caught on until Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, posted a message at 11:44 a.m. on September 19, 1982[2]. On a university bulletin board, he proposed a simple fix for a recurring problem: people kept misreading sarcastic posts as serious, sparking flame wars[13]. His message read:

"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:-("[7]

The idea spread quickly through Carnegie Mellon and then to other universities and research labs via early computer networks[13]. Fahlman later said he never expected his ten-minute post to become a lasting convention: "It was a little bit of silliness that I tossed into a discussion about physics. I expected my note might amuse a few of my friends, and that would be the end of it"[16].

An earlier claim places the first emoticon on April 12, 1979, when ARPANET user Kevin MacKenzie proposed using:-) in a MsgGroup mailing list to indicate sarcasm[4]. Britannica notes this claim but considers Fahlman's 1982 usage the "first substantiated use"[3].

The term "emoticon" itself first appeared in print in The New York Times on January 28, 1990, and was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in its June 2001 edition[4].

- **Platform:** Carnegie Mellon University bulletin board system (BBS)
- **Creator:** Scott Fahlman (inventor of:-) and:-( convention)
- **Date:** 1982

## Overview
An emoticon is a glyph made from standard keyboard characters, arranged to look like a facial expression when read sideways (in the Western style) or straight-on (in the Eastern style)[3]. The word itself is a portmanteau of "emotion" and "icon"[3]. The most basic and famous example,:-), uses a colon for eyes, a hyphen for a nose, and a closing parenthesis for a smiling mouth. Read with your head tilted left, it looks like a happy face.

Western emoticons are read at a 90-degree angle. A colon typically represents the eyes, a semicolon indicates a wink, and the mouth character determines the mood: ) for happy, ( for sad, D for laughing, P for a tongue sticking out[5]. Eastern emoticons, known as kaomoji (顔文字, literally "face characters"), are read horizontally and tend to emphasize the eyes over the mouth, drawing on the larger character sets available in Japanese writing systems[6]. Examples like (^_^), T_T, and ಠ_ಠ became internet staples without requiring any head tilting[4].

Emoticons were the original way to solve one of online communication's biggest problems: the total absence of body language and vocal tone. Without a raised eyebrow or sarcastic voice, a joke could easily read as a serious threat, and sarcasm could start flame wars[13].

## How It Spread
After catching on at Carnegie Mellon, emoticons migrated across university networks and early internet communities throughout the 1980s. CMU alumni who moved to other institutions kept reading the original bulletin boards and carried the convention with them[13]. Lists of creative smiley variations started popping up, with people inventing faces for everything from Abraham Lincoln to Santa Claus to the Pope[13].

In the spring of 1991, David W. Sanderson shared a compilation of 650 emoticons with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which hosted the list on its website[4]. That list eventually became a published book[4]. In 1992, internet enthusiast James Marshall began his own smiley collection on a personal website, growing it to 2,231 entries by 2008[12]. The first book about emoticons, *Smiley Dictionary: Cool Things to Do with Your Keyboard* by Seth Godin, came out in January 1993[4].

Meanwhile in Japan, a parallel emoticon tradition was developing. Kaomoji began appearing as early as May 1985 on ASCII Net, where users posted faces like (~_~)[4]. On January 13, 1988, a Usenet member posted "(^O^)" Master Koala faces to fj.questions.misc[4]. A Hokkaido University student saw these and created variations like (^.^) for laughing, (;.;) for crying, and (-.-) for sleeping[4]. Japanese emoticons didn't require tilting your head to read them, and the eyes carried most of the emotional weight rather than the mouth, reflecting cultural differences in how facial expressions are perceived[11].

As commercial online services grew, emoticons went mainstream. In 1990, Microsoft released the Wingdings font series, which turned letters into symbols and small pictures[9]. AOL users adopted these to decorate their profiles[4]. AOL introduced a base set of 16 graphical smileys in the early 2000s, replacing typed characters with small yellow face images[4]. By 2007, Yahoo! Messenger had expanded its smiley set to include rolling on the floor, applause, and "talk to the hand"[4]. MySmiley.net launched in 2006 as a repository where users could copy and paste graphical smileys into forum posts and messages[4].

The transition from typed emoticons to graphical ones accelerated through the 2000s. Services like Skype, Gchat, and MSN Messenger all replaced character sequences with image equivalents[4]. This shift set the stage for emoji, which Japanese mobile phone companies had been developing since the late 1990s[8].

## How to Use
Emoticons work by typing standard keyboard characters in sequence to form a face or expression. Western-style emoticons are typically read by tilting your head to the left.

**Common Western emoticons:**
-:-) or:) — happy, joking
-:-( or:( — sad, serious
-;-) or;) — winking, flirtatious
-:-D or:D — laughing, very happy
-:-P or:P — tongue out, playful
-:-O or:O — surprised
- >:-( — angry
-:'( — crying

**Common Eastern emoticons (kaomoji):**
- (^_^) — happy
- (T_T) — crying
- (-_-) — unimpressed or sleeping
- (ಠ_ಠ) — disapproval
- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ — shrug
- (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ — table flip (frustration)

People typically drop them at the end of a message to signal tone. A simple "thanks:)" reads differently from "thanks" alone. The colon-parenthesis combo is the most common, and the nose (hyphen) is increasingly dropped in casual use. Most modern platforms auto-convert common emoticons into graphical emoji, though some communities still prefer the typed originals.

## Cultural Impact
Emoticons fundamentally changed how humans communicate in writing. Before Fahlman's 1982 proposal, text-based communication had no widely adopted mechanism for conveying tone, sarcasm, or emotional context[3]. The convention filled a gap that language theorists had been pointing to for decades, from Nabokov's 1969 call for "a special typographical sign for a smile" to the problem of flame wars on early message boards[7].

The 30th anniversary of the emoticon in 2012 drew widespread media coverage, with outlets like The Atlantic, CNN, and HuffPost reflecting on three decades of digital facial expressions[1][16]. Fahlman's original post became a minor piece of computing history, preserved through deliberate digital archaeology[13].

The academic debate around emoticons shaped discussions about digital literacy and communication. Some critics viewed them as lazy shortcuts that degraded writing quality, while researchers found they served as crucial stand-ins for the nonverbal cues that face-to-face conversation provides[3]. The Unicode Consortium's FAQ explicitly distinguishes between emoticons (text-based facial expressions), emoji (pictographic characters), dingbats (ornamental symbols), and pictographs (simple picture representations)[15].

Emoticons also became the foundation of a massive commercial ecosystem. The Line messaging app's sticker system, which launched in 2011 and generated $17 million in Q1 2013 revenue alone, grew directly from the emoticon tradition[10]. Modern emoji keyboards, graphical sticker packs, and animated reactions all trace their lineage back to those three keyboard characters Fahlman typed in 1982.

## Fun Facts
- Fahlman's original 1982 message was lost for nearly 20 years before being recovered from ancient backup tapes in a project he nicknamed the "Digital Coelacanth Project"[13].
- The transcript of an 1862 Abraham Lincoln speech appears to contain a;-) emoticon, though linguists believe it was likely a typesetting error[6].
- In 2021, the original digital smiley sold at an NFT auction for $237,500[10].
- Microsoft had to deny that the Wingdings rendering of "NYC" as a skull, Star of David, and thumbs up was an antisemitic message. The arrangement was coincidental[9].
- James Marshall's canonical smiley list, compiled starting in 1992, grew to 2,231 unique emoticons and was named a Links2Go Key Resource in 1999[12].

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What are emoticons?
Emoticons are pictorial representations of facial expressions made from keyboard characters like punctuation marks, letters, and numbers. They convey emotion and tone in text-based communication[3].

### Where did emoticons come from?
The modern emoticon convention was proposed by computer scientist Scott Fahlman on September 19, 1982, on a Carnegie Mellon University bulletin board, where he suggested:-) for jokes and:-( for serious posts[2].

### What does "emoticon" mean?
The word is a portmanteau of "emotion" and "icon." It first appeared in print in The New York Times on January 28, 1990[4].

### How do you use emoticons?
Type keyboard characters in sequence to form a face. Western emoticons like:) are read sideways, while Eastern kaomoji like (^_^) are read straight on. Place them at the end of a message to signal tone[5].

### Are emoticons still popular?
Typed emoticons have largely been replaced by graphical emoji on most platforms, but the basic convention remains widely recognized. Kaomoji and text faces like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ still see active use, particularly on Reddit and Twitter[4].

### What's the difference between emoticons and emoji?
Emoticons are made from keyboard characters (like:-)). Emoji are standardized pictographic images encoded in Unicode. The word "emoji" comes from Japanese and its resemblance to "emotion" is coincidental[8][15].

### Who invented the smiley face emoticon?
Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, proposed:-) and:-( on September 19, 1982. An earlier 1979 suggestion by ARPANET user Kevin MacKenzie exists but is less well-documented[3][4].

### What are kaomoji?
Kaomoji (顔文字) are Japanese-style emoticons read horizontally rather than sideways. They emphasize the eyes over the mouth and use Japanese and Unicode characters for greater expressiveness. They first appeared on ASCII Net in Japan around 1985[4][11].

### Did Abraham Lincoln use an emoticon?
A transcript of an 1862 Lincoln speech contains what looks like a;-) wink, but linguist Philip Seargeant and other experts believe it was a typesetting error, not an intentional emoticon[6].

### Why did Scott Fahlman create emoticons?
Sarcastic posts on Carnegie Mellon's bulletin board kept getting misread as serious, sparking flame wars. Fahlman proposed:-) to mark jokes so readers would know not to take them literally[13].

### What does Scott Fahlman think of modern emoji?
In a 2012 interview, Fahlman called graphical emoji "ugly" and said they "ruin the challenge of trying to come up with a clever way to express emotions using standard keyboard characters"[16].

### When were emoji added to the iPhone?
Apple included emoji in iPhone firmware 2.2 in November 2008, initially restricted to Japanese Softbank users. Guides to unlock them worldwide appeared within days, and Apple later issued a takedown order against emoji-enabling apps in February 2009[14].

### What was the first emoticon book?
*Smiley Dictionary: Cool Things to Do with Your Keyboard* by Seth Godin, published in January 1993, was the first book about emoticons[4].

## References
1. [Today, the Emoticon Turns 30 :-) - The Atlantic](<https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/today-the-emoticon-turns-30/262571/>)
2. [History of Emoticons and Emoji](<https://www.thoughtco.com/emoticons-and-emoji-1991412>)
3. [Emoticon | Definition, History, & Facts | Britannica](<https://www.britannica.com/topic/emoticon>)
4. [Emoticons - Know Your Meme](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/emoticons>)
5. [List of emoticons](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emoticons>)
6. [Emoticons - Urban Dictionary](<https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Emoticons>)
7. [Puck (magazine)](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puck_%28magazine%29>)
8. [Emoticon](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon>)
9. [Scott Fahlman](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Fahlman>)
10. [Emoji](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji>)
11. [Dingbat](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingbat>)
12. [Urban Dictionary: emoticon](<https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=emoticon>)
13. [Puck (magazine) - Wikipedia](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puck_(magazine)>)
14. [Wingdings - Wikipedia](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingdings>)
15. [The Evolution of Emoticons into Emojis, Stickers, GIFs, and Avatars](<https://journal.everypixel.com/the-history-of-emoji-gifs-stickers-and-avatars>)
16. [Kaomoji: Japanese Emoticons](<https://kaomoji.you/en/>)
17. [emoticon – Lost in Blog.](<https://jcraigmdia5003.wordpress.com/tag/emoticon/>)
18. [Canonical Smiley List](<http://marshall.freeshell.org/smileys.html>)
19. [The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce ...: Antepenultimata - Ambrose Bierce - Google Books](<https://books.google.com/books?id=3nEcAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA387#v=onepage&q&f=false>)
20. [Smiley Lore :-)](<http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/sefSmiley.htm>)
21. [kigou no imi](<https://groups.google.com/group/fj.questions.misc/msg/b826c9cd2465fa32?>)
22. [Mysmiley - Free Smileys | Free Smiley Icons | Smiley Emoticons](<http://www.mysmiley.net/>)
23. [Full List of Yahoo! Smileys or Emoticons](<http://www.labnol.org/internet/voice/full-list-of-yahoo-smileys-or-emoticons-for-yahoo-messenger/764/>)
24. [The Very Long History of Emoticons - Good.is](<https://www.good.is/post/the-very-long-history-of-emoticons/>)
25. [TheGeekWhisperer.com is for sale | HugeDomains](<http://thegeekwhisperer.com/2009/07/30/special-gchat-smilies/>)
26. [Emoticon (Smiley) Origin | Snopes.com](<http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/smiley.asp>)
27. [Apple issues App Store-wide Emoji take-down order - Ars Technica](<https://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/02/apple-issues-store-wide-emoji-take-down-order/>)
28. [Access and Use Emoji in Mac OS X](<http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/20/emoji-mac-os-x-lion/>)
29. [FAQ - Emoji & Pictographs](<http://unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html>)
30. [JapaneseEmoticons.me — Express Yourself with Japanese Emoticons, Kaomoji, Emoji, Text Faces and Dongers!](<http://www.japaneseemoticons.net/>)
31. [Scott Fahlman, Inventor Of The Emoticon, Calls Emoji 'Ugly' :'-( | HuffPost College](<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/12/scott-fahlman-inventor-of-emoticon-birthday-emoji-ugly_n_1878289.html?utm_hp_ref=college>)

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