Emoticon

An emoticon ( /ɪˈmoʊtɪkɒn/) is a written symbol, often as 2 or 3 punctuation characters, that stands for the writer's mood or facial expression. Some examples are: a smile ":-)" or wink ";-)" or frown ":(" or dog nose ":O" or le meme arrow ">" (see many other examples in text below). Emoticons are often used to tell a reader about the general tone of a statement, and can change or improve the reading of plain writing. Over the years, many kinds of emoticons have been created, and now there are hundreds of known emoticons. The word "emoticon" is a blend of the English words emotion (or emote) and icon. In web forums, instant messengers and online games, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small pictures, which came to be called emoticons as well. Certain complex character combinations can only be accomplished in a double-byte language, giving rise to very 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 or humorous writing. In 1912, a smiling mouth (or snigger point) was shown in typewriter text as "\___/!". Digital forms of emoticons on the Internet were written in an email during 1982.^[1]

1. ↑ See Fahlman's website for a copy of the whole thread.