Emoticons

Emoticons are markers of emotion in messages (including e-mail, newsgroup, forum, and text messaging). First invented in 1982 at Carnegie Mellon University by Scott Fahlman, the original emoticons were simple combinations of ASCII characters that looked vaguely like smiling or frowning faces when viewed sideways: :-) :-( They were intended to indicate a humorous or displeased mood, to disambiguate messages that could sometimes be unclear with the absence of the facial expressions which are visible in in-person talk.

Since that early time, the repertoire of emoticons has greatly increased with many different expressions being simulated with character combinations. Also, many mail and forum programs convert emoticons into graphical symbols that more clearly show smiling, frowning, and other expressions. The Japanese set of "emoji", an extended graphical emoticon set that is now part of the Unicode character set, is popular in text messaging in recent times.