Many smartphones and online chat apps, like Facebook chat and AOL Instant messenger (AIM) offer this feature. The word emoticon is defined as a pictorial representation of a facial expression. Some chat and instant message programs will automatically translate text smiley faces into graphical emoticons. Remember, each smiley face or symbol is sideways. Over time the basic smiley face was adapted to suit a whole range of emotions, and people started creating different symbols to represent ideas and feelings: For example, you could text a rose to your friends are few examples of different smiley faces and their meanings. Various “joke markers” were suggested, and in the midst of that discussion it occurred to me that the character sequence ? would be an elegant solution one that could be handled by the ASCII-based computer terminals of the day.” Text Smiley Faces and Their Meaning After all, when using text-based online communication, we lack the body language or tone-of-voice cues that convey this information when we talk in person or on the phone. “This problem caused some of us to suggest (only half seriously) that maybe it would be a good idea to explicitly mark posts that were not to be taken seriously. In this article, Smiley Lore ?, Fahlman describes why he felt there was a need to mark posts that contributors did not intend to be taken seriously by others reading the message board: The message detailing the use of the smiley emoticons was posted in September, 1982. He thought using smile and frown text symbols would help message board users distinguish between serious posts and jokes. The idea and first use of a text smiley face is credited to Scott Elliott Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. The First Smiley Face: History of the Symbol Use the open bracket ( to turn the smile into a frown ?.
Use the letter 8 in place of the colon for sunglasses ?.Put a zero 0 (halo) on top and now you have a winking, smiling angel 0 ) with a nose 0 -).Change the colon to a semi-colon and you have a winking face ? with a nose ?.Put them together to make a smiley face ?.Add in the colon and you have sideways eyes :.The close bracket represents a sideways smile ).Here are some basics to get you started with understanding what different characters used in smiley faces mean: To create a text smiley face you use standard characters and punctuation marks in sequences that look like human facial expressions. People might also send a sad face text message if they don’t agree with something you wrote. A sad face usually indicates you are sad or upset. In a face-to-face communication you would laugh or really smile to convey the “I’m joking around or kidding with you” emotion. If you send the same message with a happy smiley face symbol : ) the person would take that to mean you were smiling when you sent the message and know you were joking with them. If you were joking with someone and sent a text message saying “ get a life” the person receiving the message might think you are being rude with your comment. These simple symbols tells people that you are smiling, laughing, upset or not very happy with the conversation that is currently taking place in text. In the same way that a person’s voice or facial expression changes when having a conversation, a smiley face is used to achieve the same result in text-based chats.
Despite its simplicity, it helps others to correctly interpret your intent and meaning in online conversations. The smiley face is used to convey emotion, much in the same way we use facial expressions when we communicate with people face-to-face. A smiley face is ordinary keyboard characters used in text-based communications to represent a human facial expression.
Learn how to read and make your own smiley faces or emoji. A smiley face is a facial expression, or emotion in text conversations.