Emoticon - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

An emoticon is a facial expression pictorially represented by punctuation and letters, usually to express a writer’s mood. Emoticons are often used to alert a responder to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text. The word is a portmanteau word

Portmanteau word

A portmanteau or portmanteau word is a blend of two words or morphemes into one new word. A portmanteau word typically combines both sounds and meanings, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog. More generally, it may refer to any term or phrase that combines two or more meanings...

of the English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

words emotion and icon. In web forums, instant messengers

Instant messaging

Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...

and online game

Online game

An online game is a game played over some form of computer network. This almost always means the Internet or equivalent technology, but games have always used whatever technology was current: modems before the Internet, and hard wired terminals before modems...

s, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which came to be called emoticons as well. Certain complex character combinations can only be accomplished in a double-byte language, giving rise to especially 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 and/or humorous writing. Digital forms of emoticons on the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

were included in a proposal by Scott Fahlman

Scott Fahlman

Scott Elliott Fahlman is a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. He is notable for early work on automated planning in a blocks world, on semantic networks, on neural networks , on the Dylan programming language, and on Common Lisp...

of Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....

in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

, in a message on 19 September 1982.

Antecedents

The National Telegraphic Review and Operators Guide in April 1857 documented the use of the number 73 in Morse code

Morse code

Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...

to express "love and kisses" "<3 and :*" (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

Morse Code Abbreviations

Morse code abbreviations differ from prosigns for Morse Code in that they observe normal interletter spacing; that is, they are not "run together" the way prosigns are. From 1845 until well into the second half of the 20th century, commercial telegraphic code books were used to shorten telegrams, e.g...

are more succinct than modern abbreviations such as LOL

LOL (Internet slang)

LOL, an abbreviation for laughing out loud, or laugh out loud, is a common element of Internet slang. It was used historically on Usenet but is now widespread in other forms of computer-mediated communication, and even face-to-face communication...

.

A New York Times transcript from Abraham Lincoln's

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

speech written in 1862 discovered by Bryan Benilous contains ";)"; there is some debate as to whether it is a typo, a legitimate punctuation construct, or an emoticon.

Typographical emoticons were published in 1881 by the U.S. satirical magazine Puck
Puck (magazine)
Puck was America's first successful humor magazine of colorful cartoons, caricatures and political satire of the issues of the day. It was published from 1871 until 1918.-History:...

. In 1912 Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...

proposed "an improvement in punctuation — the snigger point, or note of cachinnation: it is written thus \___/! and presents 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".

Emoticons had already come into use in sci-fi fandom

Fandom

Fandom is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest...

in the 1940s, 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

Harvey Ball

Harvey Ross Ball was an American commercial artist. He is recognized as the earliest known designer of the smiley, which became an enduring and notable international icon. Ball was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts...

. 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 that depicts this is in fact a small yellow smiley face.

In a New York Times interview in April 1969, Alden Whitman

Alden Whitman

Alden Whitman was an American journalist. He worked at The New York Times where he pioneered writing personalized obituaries. He is also known for his testimony before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee...

asked writer Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...

: "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."

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

Scott Fahlman

; the text of his original proposal, posted to the Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....

computer science general board

Bulletin board system

A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...

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

ARPANET

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network , was the world's first operational packet switching network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet...

and Usenet

Usenet

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

. Many variations on the theme were immediately suggested by Scott and others.

Graphical replacement

In web forums, instant messengers

Instant messaging

and online game

Online game

s, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which came to be called "Emoticons." Similarly, in some versions of Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...

, 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. The first web forum software package to perform this transformation was Proxicom Forum, developed in 1996.

An August 2004 issue of the Risks Digest (comp.risks on USENET

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)

401(k)

A 401 is a type of retirement savings account in the United States, which takes its name from subsection of the Internal Revenue Code . A contributor can begin to withdraw funds after reaching the age of 59 1/2 years...

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

Raster graphics editor

A raster graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to paint and edit pictures interactively on the computer screen and save them in one of many popular “bitmap” or “raster” formats such as JPEG, PNG, GIF and TIFF....

. Many emoticon artists design their emoticons pixel by pixel

Pixel art

Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art.- History :The term pixel art was first...

. Some emoticons are made in vector

Vector Graphic

Vector Graphic is an early microcomputer from the mid 1970's. It is from the pre-IBM PC era as along with the NorthStar Horizon, IMSAI, and MITS Altair.It is based on the S-100 bus using the Z80 microprocessor...

format, such as SVG, and automatically processed using a graphics library

Graphics library

A graphics library is a program library designed to aid in rendering computer graphics to a monitor. This typically involves providing optimized versions of functions that handle common rendering tasks. This can be done purely in software and running on the CPU, common in embedded systems, or being...

. This allows SVG files to be automatically rendered as a GIF or PNG file, which is compatible with most browsers, as opposed to SVG, which 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.

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. Similar to : a grin :D [which can also be reversed for an unhappy face D: ] smug :-> and tongue out :P for disgust or simply just to stick the tongue out for silliness, such as when blowing a raspberry

Blowing a raspberry

Blowing a raspberry or strawberry or making a Bronx cheer is to make a noise signifying derision, real or feigned. It is made by placing the tongue between the lips and blowing, making a sound redolent of flatulence. In the terminology of phonetics, this sound can be described as an unvoiced...

. An often used combination is also <3 for a heart, and A broad grin is often shown with crinkled eyes to express further amusement: XD and the addition of further 'D' letters can suggest laughter or extreme amusement e.g. XDDDD. There are hundreds of other variations including >:D for an evil grin or >:( for anger, which can be, again, used in reverse, for an unhappily angry face, in the shape of D:< .owo for a goofy grin, =K for vampire teeth, :s for grimace or >.< for eye-crinkling exasperation, and ;P for wanting to be more than friends. ;P can also be used to denote a flirting or joking tone, or may be implying a second meaning in the sentence preceding it.

Variation

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 . 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. :) . 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 layout

Keyboard layout

A keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key–meaning associations of a computer, typewriter, or other typographic keyboard....

s. For example, the smiley =) is common in Scandinavia

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

, 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

Diacritic

A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...

are sometimes used. The letters Ö and 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).

Some emoticons may be written right to left as well, and in fact can only be written using standard ASCII keyboard characters this way round; for example D: which refers to being shocked or anxious.

Japanese style

Users from Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

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. Similar looking emoticons were used by Byte Information Exchange

Byte Information Exchange

Byte Information eXchange was an online service created around 1985 by Byte magazine. It was a text-only Bulletin Board System-style site running the CoSy conferencing software running originally on an Arete multiprocessor system based on Motorola 68000s. When that didn't scale well, it was...

(BIX) around the same time.

These emoticons are usually found in a format similar to (*_*). The asterisk

Asterisk

An asterisk is a typographical symbol or glyph. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often pronounce it as star...

s indicate the eyes; the central character, commonly an underscore

Underscore

The underscore [ _ ] is a character that originally appeared on the typewriter and was primarily used to underline words...

, the mouth; and the parentheses, the outline of the face.

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 emoticon 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, <.<;. o-o,e_e,e.e and/or owo. 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 popular and common asian animation

Anime

is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

.

Microsoft IME

Input method editor

An input method is an operating system component or program that allows any data, such as keyboard strokes or mouse movements, to be received as input. In this way users can enter characters and symbols not found on their input devices...

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 character

Combining character

In digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritical marks ....

s, e.g. ̼⌂̺͛ᴖ̲̿ᴥ̲̿ᴖ̺͛⌂̼ and ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶ .

Common eastern examples

For a complete list see: Eastern emoticons

Icon

Meaning

Icon

Meaning

Icon

Meaning

Icon

Meaning

EWLINE

(^_^)
｡◕ ‿ ◕｡
(^▼^)

smile, happiness

EWLINE

(^o^) :A

laughing out loud

EWLINE

d(^_^)b

headphones or listening to music;

EWLINE

d(^_^d)

Thumbs up!

EWLINE

(-.-)Zzz

sleeping

EWLINE

(Z.Z)

sleepy person

EWLINE

\(^_^)/ \õ/

cheers, "Hurrah!"

EWLINE

(*^.^*) ^.^ *--*

shyness

EWLINE

(-_-;),
(-_-')
(-_-U)
(-_-#)
(-.-)
(=.=)
or
(--')

sweating (as in exasperated) irritated,not amused

EWLINE

(?_?) or

(@_@)

Nonsense, I don't know, Or not always referring to that, also a sense of confusion

EWLINE

(^_~) or
(^_-)

winking

EWLINE

(T_T) (TT_TT) (T^T) (Q_Q) (Ç.Ç) (Ç_Ç) (v_v)

sad (crying face), T_T can also be used in a similar context as -.-

EWLINE

(o.O) or (o_O) or (o.o) or (o_o) or /)O_O(\

shocked, disturbed, stunned, raised eyebrow, neutral

EWLINE

(<.<)(<_<)
why щ(ﾟДﾟщ)

(>.<)

shifty, suspicious; could also be sarcasm or irritation

EWLINE

(>'_')>O or (>'_')># or (>'_')>~(\\\)

"Have a cookie/waffle/drink from a cup with a spiral straw"

EWLINE

(O//o) (o//O) (>//<) (@//@)

blushing or shy or thinking something is cute

All of these can be used also with [ ] instead of , or without the parentheses at all in some of the cases.

Korean Style

In South Korea

South Korea

The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

, emoticons using Korean Hangul

Hangul

Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...

letters are popular as well. Korean styles of face emoticons are similar to those of Japan's, but they contain Korean jamos (letters) instead of other characters. There are countless number of emoticons that can be formed with such combinations of Korean jamos, but popular choices include letter ㅅ or ㅂ as the mouth/nose component and ㅇ,ㅎ,ㅍ for the eyes. For example: ㅇㅅㅇ, ㅇㅂㅇ, -ㅅ-, ㅡㅡ, ㅡ6ㅡ, ㄱㅡ,┐-. Faces such as 'ㅅ', "ㅅ", 'ㅂ','ㅇ', using quotation marks " and apostrophes ' are also commonly used combinations. Vowel jamos such as ㅜ,ㅠ can be used in substitute to T, when depicting a crying face. Example: //ㅅ//, ㅜㅜ, ㅠㅠ, 뉴뉴. Sometimes the underscore is omitted, and the two letters can be mixed together, as in ㅜ_ㅠ, ㅡ^ㅜ, ㅜㅇㅡ . Also, semicolons are used a lot in Korean emoticons. Example: ㅡㅂㅡ , ㅇㅅㅇ , ㅇㅁㅇ , ㅇㅂㅇ , ^ㅂ^ , ㅠㅅㅠ. Most often used ^^, ~_~, ㅜㅜ --zZ ㅋㅋ.

Western use of Japanese style

English-language anime

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 <( ^.^ )>,<(^_^<),<(o_o<),<( -'.'- )>,<('.'-^), (>';..;')> 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

Nintendo

is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....

's video game character, Kirby

Kirby (Nintendo)

is the main protagonist of Nintendo's Kirby video game series created by Masahiro Sakurai and developed by HAL Laboratory. The Kirby series is one of Nintendo's many well-known game franchises, spanning nearly twenty games since 1992...

. The parentheses are sometimes dropped when used in the English language context, and the underscore of the mouth may be extended as an intensifier

Intensifier

Intensifier is a linguistic term for a modifier that amplifies the meaning of the word it modifies. Examples are "very," "quite," "extremely," "highly," and "greatly." An intensifier is the opposite of a qualifier, a modifier that weakens the word modified: "fairly," "somewhat," "rather," "a...

, (e.g. ^______________^ for very happy) for the emoticon in question. This emoticon t(-_-t) uses the eastern style, but incorporates a depiction of the western "middle-finger flick-off (commonly known as 'the bird')" using a 't' as the arm, hand, and finger.

Mixture of Western and Japanese style

Exposure to both Western and Japanese style emoticons or emoji

Emoji

is the Japanese term for the picture characters or emoticons used in Japanese electronic messages and webpages. Originally meaning pictograph, the word literally means e "picture" + moji "letter". The characters are used much like emoticons elsewhere, but a wider range is provided, and the icons...

through web blogs, instant messaging, and forums featuring a blend of Western and Japanese pop culture, has given rise to emoticons that have an upright viewing format. The parentheses are similarly dropped in the English language context and the emoticons only use alphanumeric characters and the most commonly used English punctuation marks. Emoticons such as -O-, -3-, -w-, '_', ;_;, T_T, :>, and .V., are used to convey mixed emotions that are more difficult to convey with traditional emoticons. Characters are sometimes added to emoticons to convey an anime or manga-styled sweat drop, for example: ^_^' or !>__________<@>;; ;O; and *u*
The equal sign can also be used for closed, anime looking eyes, for example: =0=, =3=, =w=, =A=, =7=

There are also more faces along those lines like >o<; using the ; as a sweat mark, and the "o" as a mouth, and the inequality signs as the eyes, it shows stress, or slight confusion. The amount of emoticons that can be made are limitless, and all have their own meaning.

In Brazil, sometimes combining character (accent) are added to emoticons to represent eyebrows, like: ò_ó or ó_ò or õ_o or ù_u or o_Ô. They can also replace (or add) "=" or ":" by ">", example: >D or >=D or >P or >:P or >3 or >:3.

Ideographic style

The character 囧 (U+56E7), which means 'bright', is also used in the Chinese computing community for a frowning face. It is also combined with posture emoticon Orz, such as 囧rz. The character existed in Oracle bone script

Oracle bone script

Oracle bone script refers to incised ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in Bronze Age China...

, but its use as emoticon was documented as early as January 20, 2005.

Other ideographic variants for 囧 include 崮 (king 囧), 莔 (queen 囧), 商 (囧 with hat), 囧興 (turtle), 卣 (Bomberman

Bomberman

Bomberman is a strategic, maze-based computer and video game franchise originally developed by Hudson Soft. The original game was published in 1983 and new games in the series are still being published to this day. Today, the commercially successful Bomberman is featured in over 70 different games...

).

The character 槑 (U+69D1), which means 'plum', is used to represent double of '呆' (dull), or further magnitude of dullness. In Chinese, normally full characters (as opposed to the stylistic use of 槑) may be duplicated to express emphasis.

2channel style

The Japanese language is usually encoded using double-byte

Byte

The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...

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

ASCII

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

. Most kaomoji contain Cyrillic and other foreign letters to create even more complicated expressions analogous to ASCII art

ASCII art

ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters...

'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

Shift JIS art

Shift_JIS art is artwork created from characters within the Shift JIS character set, a superset of ASCII intended for Japanese usage. Naturally there are many similarities between Shift_JIS artwork and ASCII art....

.

Users of 2channel

2channel

is a Japanese textboard. In 2007 there were 2.5 million posts made every day. Launched in 1999, it has gained significant influence in Japanese society, comparable to that of traditional mass media such as television, radio, and magazines. As of 2008, the site generates revenue upwards of ¥100...

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.

Orz

Orz (also seen as Or2, on_, OTZ, OTL, STO, JTO, _no, ＿冂○, 囧rz, O7Z, _|7O, Sto, O|¯|_, orz, and Jto) is an emoticon representing a kneeling or bowing person, with the "o" being the head, the "r" being the arms and part of the body, and the "z" being part of the body and the legs. This stick figure

Stick figure

A stick figure is a very simple type of drawing made of lines and dots, often of the human form or other animals. In a stick figure, the head is represented by a circle, sometimes embellished with details such as eyes, mouth or crudely scratched-out hair. The arms, legs and torso are all...

represents failure and despair. It is also commonly used for representing a great admiration (sometimes with an overtone of sarcasm) for someone else's view or action.

It was first used in late 2002 at the forum on Techside, Japanese personal website. At the "Techside FAQ Forum" (TECHSIDE教えて君BBS(教えてBBS) ), a poster asked about a cable cover, typing "＿|￣|○" to show a cable and its cover. Others commented that it looked like a kneeling person, and the symbol became popular. These comments were soon deleted as they were considered off-topic. However, one of the first corresponding reactions can be found on the thread on , on December 23, 2002. By 2005, Orz spawned a subculture

Subculture

In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...

: blogs have been devoted to the emoticon, and URL shortening

URL shortening

URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a Uniform Resource Locator may be made substantially shorter in length and still direct to the required page. This is achieved by using an HTTP Redirect on a domain name that is short, which links to the web page that has a long URL...

services have been named after it. In Taiwan, Orz is associated 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 are a nice guy."

Orz should not be confused with m(_ _)m, which means "Thank you" or an apology.

Multimedia variations

A portmanteau of emotion and sound
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...

, an emotisound is a brief sound transmitted and played back during the viewing of a message, typically an IM message or e-mail message. The sound is intended to communicate an emotional subtext

Subtext

Subtext or undertone is content of a book, play, musical work, film, video game, or television series which is not announced explicitly by the characters but is implicit or becomes something understood by the observer of the work as the production unfolds. Subtext can also refer to the thoughts...

. Many instant messaging clients automatically trigger sound effects in response to specific emoticons.

Some services, such as MuzIcons, combine emoticons and Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

music player in a widget.

In 2004, The Trillian chat application introduced a feature called "emotiblips", which allows Trillian users to stream files to their instant message recipients "as the voice and video equivalent of an emoticon".

In 2007, MTV

MTV

MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

and Paramount Home Entertainment promoted the "emoticlip" as a form of viral marketing

Viral marketing

Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...

for the second season of the show The Hills. The emoticlips were twelve short snippets of dialogue from the show, uploaded to YouTube, which the advertisers hoped would be distributed between web users as a way of expressing feelings in a similar manner to emoticons. The emoticlip concept is credited to the Bradley & Montgomery advertising firm, which hopes they would be widely adopted as "greeting cards that just happen to be selling something".

In 2008 an emotion-sequence animation tool, called FunIcons was created. The Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

and Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

-based application allows users to create a short animation. Users can then email or save their own animations to use them on similar social utility applications.

Emoticons and intellectual property rights

In 2000 Despair, Inc.

Despair, Inc.

Despair, Inc is a company based in Austin, Texas, that produces posters and souvenirs that satirize the motivational indoctrination common in corporate environments....

obtained a U.S. trademark

Trademark

A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...

registration for the "frowny" emoticon :-( when used on "greeting cards, posters and art prints." In 2001, they issued a satirical press release, announcing that they would sue Internet users who typed the frowny; the joke backfired and the company received a storm of protest when its mock release was posted at technology news website Slashdot

Slashdot

Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...

.
A number of patent application

Patent application

A patent application is a request pending at a patent office for the grant of a patent for the invention described and claimed by that application. An application consists of a description of the invention , together with official forms and correspondence relating to the application...

s have been filed on inventions that assist in communicating with emoticons. A few of these have issued as US patent

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

s. , for example, discloses a method developed in 2001 to send emoticons over a cell phone using a drop down menu. The stated advantage over the prior art

Prior art

Prior art , in most systems of patent law, constitutes all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent's claims of originality...

was that the user saved on the number of keystrokes though this may not address the obviousness criteria.

In Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

, the emoticons :-), =), = and :( were trademark

Trademark

ed in 2006 for use with various products and services. The emoticon :-) was also filed in 2006 and registered in 2008 as a European Community Trademark (CTM).

In 2008, Russian entrepreneur Oleg Teterin claimed to have been granted the trademark on the ;-) emoticon. A license would not "cost that much - tens of thousands of dollars" for companies, but would be free of charge for individuals.

Unicode

Emoticons are introduced in Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

Standard version 6.0. It covers unicode range from 1F600 to 1F64F.

Examples

Japanese emoticons

2-byte Japanese emoticons
Anikaos Japanese Anime emoticons list
Article - A Guide to Anime Emoticons Western usage of kaomoji
Koto Phone in Japan Flickr set - Example of default kaomoji on Japanese cell phone
List of Microsoft Office Input Method Editor emoticons

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Antecedents

Creation of :-) and :-(

Graphical replacement

Western style

Common western examples

Variation

Japanese style

Common eastern examples

Korean Style

Western use of Japanese style

Mixture of Western and Japanese style

Ideographic style

2channel style

Orz

Multimedia variations

Emoticons and intellectual property rights

Unicode

See also

Further reading

External links

Examples

Japanese emoticons