An
emoticon is a textual expression representing
the face of a writer's mood or facial expression. For example, :),
:(, and :D. They 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 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 corresponding images, which came
to be called
emoticons as well.
The use of emoticons can be traced back to the
nineteenth century and were commonly used
in casual/humorous writing. Digital forms of emoticons on the
Internet were included in a proposal by
Scott Fahlman in a message on 19
September 1982.
History
Antecedents
The
National Telegraphic Review and Operators Guide in
April 1857 documented the use of the number 73 in
Morse code to express "love and kisses" (later
reduced to the more formal "bst 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 are more
succinct than modern abbreviations such as
LOL.
A New York Times transcript from
Abraham
Lincoln's speech written in
1862 discovered
by Bryan Benilous appears to contain a "winking" emoticon, but it
is unclear whether it is an actual use, a
typo
or a legitimate punctuation construct.
Typographical emoticons were published in 1881 by the U.S.
satirical magazine
Puck. In
1912
Ambrose Bierce 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 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. 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 asked writer
Vladimir Nabokov: "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."
Pre-1980 emoticons
Teletype machine operators, as early as 1973 , and probably long
before that date, used "emoticons" to express themselves. Teletypes
were limited to the keys of a standard typewriter keyboard plus a
few special characters. Teletype operators developed a sort of
shorthand to communicate among themselves. These shorthand
notations became the foundation of "emoticons" as computers began
to replace teletypes on university campuses.
By the early 1970s, people on the
PLATO
System were using emoticons. They had many of the advantages of
later character-based emoticons because they could be used anywhere
that you could type text and new emoticons could be created
whenever someone thought up a new one. They also had many of the
advantages of later graphical emoticons because they used character
overstriking which created graphical images.
Several Internet websites —such as
BT's
Connected Earth— assert that Kevin Mackenzie proposed
-)
as a joke-marker in April 1979, on the
MsgGroup ARPANET mailing
list. The idea was to indicate
tongue-in-cheek — the
hyphen represented a tongue, not a nose:
15-Apr-79 12:05:26-PST,1142;000000000000Mail-from: MIT-MC rcvd at
12-Apr-79 1740-PSTDate: 12 APR 1979 1736-PSTFrom: MACKENZIE at
USC-ECLSubject: MSGGROUP#1015 METHICS and the Fast Draw(cont'd)To:
~drxal-had at OFFICE-1cc: msggroup at MIT-MC, malasky at
PARC-MAXC
In regard to your message a few days ago concerning the lossof
meaning in this medium:
I am new here, and thus hesitate to comment, but I too havesuffered
from the lack of tone, gestures, facial expressionsetc. May I
suggest the beginning of a solution? Perhaps we couldextend the set
of punctuation we use, i.e:
If I wish to indicate that a particular sentence is meantwith
tongue-in-cheek, I would write it so:
"Of course you know I agree with all the current
administration's policies -)."
The "-)" indicates tongue-in-cheek.
This idea is not mine, but stolen from a Reader's Digest articleI
read long ago on a completely different subject. I'm sure thereare
many other, better ways to improve our punctuation.
Any comments?
Kevin
Others used
:-) for tongue-in-cheek, with the colon
representing teeth. Also used was
-:) to indicate sticking
out your tongue, in derision or anger. Although similar to a
sideways smiling face, the intended interpretation was different
and this does not appear to have inspired the later smileys.
In the late sixties the APL programming language and timesharing
environment, with its rich character set with backspace and
overstrike capability provided a fruitful arena for interactive and
creative symbol invention. Union-backspace-dieresis (∪̈) was a
recognised and upright smiley in the early seventies.
Graphical replacement
In
web forums,
instant messengers and
online games, text emoticons are often
automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which came
to be called "Emoticons." Similarly, in some versions of
Microsoft Word, 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) 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 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. Many emoticon artists design their emoticons
pixel by pixel. Some emoticons are made in
vector format, such as
SVG, and automatically processed using a
graphics library. This allows SVG files to
be automatically rendered as a GIF or PNG file, which is compatible
with most browsers, which SVG 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. To more easily recognize them, tilt your
head toward your left shoulder (or occasionally toward your right
shoulder if the "top" of the emoticon is toward the right).
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 without hyphen
(nose), and so on:
Sarcasm implied :d (used because "d" refers to "dry" humor, and
also because the "smiley" is sticking his tongue out at
itself)
| Icon |
Meaning |
Icon |
Meaning |
Icon |
Meaning |
| :-) |
:) |
| :] |
=] |
| =) |
:> |
| => |
:D |
| ^_^ |
^-^ |
^3^ |
^w^ |
^o^ |
^x^ |
^u^ |
ouo |
|
Smiling, happy |
| :-( |
| =( |
| :[ |
| : |
| =[ |
| :( |
| D: |
T-T/TT-TT |
T_T/TT_TT |
T^T/TT^TT |
T3T/TT3TT |
TwT/TTwTT |
TnT/TTnTT |
ToT/TToTTDx |
|
|
frowning, Sad |
|
Wink |
|
|
Large grin |
|
Tongue out, or after a joke. |
| <3 |
o3o |
O3O |
owo |
OwO |
*3* |
*w* |
*-* |
*_* |
*.* |
:3 |
|
|
Love, cat-face (indicates playful, possibly naughty or
mischievous tone) |
| :O |
| =O |
| :(] |
| :o |
| o-o |
o.o |
O.o |
o.O |
O.O |
o_o |
O_o |
o_O |
O_O |
|
Shocked or surprised |
| =I |
:I |
| :/ |
| :-\ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| "/ |
|} || Bored, awkward or annoyed; concerned; 'what?' face. || {|
cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |:S |- |=S |- |:? |@3@ |@w@ |@-@ |@_@ |@.@ |} || Confused,
embarrassed or uneasy |} {| cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |>:} |- |>:] |- |>=} |- |>=] |- |>:D |- |>:3
|- |>:O |- |>:o |- |>o |- |D:<
|- |D<
|} ===Variation=== {{Main|ASCII art}} 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
some circles it has become acceptable to omit the hyphen, whether a
colon or an equal sign is used for the
eyes.[http://denoser.sourceforge.net/ Denoser
] In other 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]]s, for example the smiley =) is common
in [[Scandinavia]] 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
( . [[Diacritic|Diacritical marks]] are sometimes used. An
O or U with an [[umlaut (diacritic)|umlaut]], Ö,
Ü can be seen as an emoticon, as the upright version of
:O (meaning that one is surprised) and :D (meaning that
one is happy). ==Asian style== {{Mergefrom|emoji|date=November
2007}} {{Mergefrom|kaoani|date=November 2007}} Users from [[East
Asia]] 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.[http://staff.aist.go.jp/k.harigaya/doc/kao_his.html The
History of Smiley Marks] Similar looking emoticons were used by
[[Byte Information Exchange]] (BIX) around the same
time.[http://catb.org/jargon/oldversions/jarg261.txt Jargon file,
version 2.6.1, February 12, 1991] These emoticons are usually found
in a format similar to (*_*). The [[asterisk]]s indicate the eyes;
the central character, commonly an [[underscore]], the mouth; and
the parentheses, the outline of the face. Two separate studies, in
2007 at [[Hokkaido University]] and in 2009 at [[University of
Glasgow|Glasgow University]], showed that Japanese and other East
Asians read facial expressions by looking mainly at the eyes, and
the researchers noted that this is reflected in East Asian
emoticons which put emphasis on the eyes, compared to Western
emoticons which emote mainly with the mouth.{{cite
web|url=http://www.livescience.com/health/070510_facial_culture.html|title=Americans
and Japanese Read Faces
Differently|publisher=[[LiveScience]]|date=10 May
2007|accessdate=August 16 2009}}{{cite
web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8199951.stm|title=Facial
expressions 'not global'|publisher=[[BBC]]|date=14 August
2009|accessdate=August 16 2009}} Different emotions 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 emote 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 [[Bracket#Curly brackets or braces .7B
.7D|braces]], e.g. {^_^}. Many times, the parentheses are left out
completely, e.g. ^^, >.<, o_O, O.O, <.<;, though this
is more likely in Western culture. 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 [[anime]] culture. Many other characters can be
appended to also indicate arms or hands, e.g. <(^_^)> or
\(^o^)/ or ⊂( ﾟヮﾟ)⊃ or (/.\) => (\^o^/) (peek-a-boo) or
<(-.-<) or /(T_T)\.lml (>_<) lml Rock on! Microsoft
[[Input method editor|IME]] 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 characters]], e.g. ̼⌂̺͛ᴖ̲̿ᴥ̲̿ᴖ̺͛⌂̼ and ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶
. ===Common eastern examples=== {{Main|List of emoticons}}
{|class="wikitable" border="1" |- !width=100|Icon
!width=180|Meaning !width=100|Icon !width=180|Meaning
!width=100|Icon !width=180|Meaning |- | {| cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |(^_^) |} ||smile|| {| cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |(^o^) |} ||laughing out loud|| {| cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |d(^_^)b |} || headphones or listening to music; also seen as
thumbs up |- | {| cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |(;_;) |} || sad (crying face)|| {| cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|(-.-)Zzz |} ||sleeping|| {| cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |(Z.Z) |} ||sleepy person |- | {| cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |\(^_^)/ |} ||cheers, "Hurrah!"|| {| cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |(*^.^*) |} ||shyness|| {| cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|(-_-;) or (-_-*) |} ||sweating (as in ashamed), or exasperated. |-
| {| cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |(*_*) |} ||"Surprise !."|| {| cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |(?_?) |} ||"Nonsense, I don't know."|| {| cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |(^_~) or ( ^_-) |} ||wink |- | {| cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |(o.O) |} ||shocked/disturbed/raised eyebrow|| {|
cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |(<.<) |} ||shifty, suspicious: could also be sarcasm|| {|
cellspacing="0"
style="margin:auto;border-collapse:collapse;font-weight:bold;background:black;color:white;font-family:monospace;text-align:center;font-size:large;"
|- |v(^_^)v |} ||Peace, Victory |} all of these can be used also
with [ ] instead of ( ) ===Korean Style=== In [[South Korea]],
emoticons using Korean [[Hangul]] letters have been getting popular
lately as well. Korean styles of face emoticons are similar to
those of Japan's, but they contain Korean [[jamo]]s (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-. Faces
such as 'ㅅ', "ㅅ", 'ㅂ' 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:
ㅜ_ㅜ, ㅠ_ㅠ. Sometimes the underscore is omitted, and the two letters
can be mixed together, as in ㅜㅠ. Single or multiple ; (Semicolons)
are often used together with faces depicting embarrassment, for an
added effect. Also, other characters may be added to indicate
hands, similar to the Japanese emoticons; but usually they are only
attached on the right. Example: -ㅅ-a (scratching one's head), 'ㅅ'b
([[Thumbs up]]), 'ㅅ'ㅗ ([[Finger (gesture)|The finger]]) In some
cases, like ㅎ_ㅎ, the emoticon can mean an emotion even when it is
not depicting a face of any specific emotion. Letters ㅎ and ㅋ are
widely used in Korean internet as a sign of laughter (similar to
the usage of "w" in Japanese Web); and so the emoticons using those
letters as the eye component can be interpreted as a laughing face.
Also, ㅇㅈㄴ is a Korean version of "orz" mentioned above, depicting a
man kneeling down. ===Western use of East Asian style===
English-language [[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<),<( -'.'-
)>,<('.'-^),(.ㅅ.), 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]]'s [[video game]]
character, [[Kirby (Nintendo)|Kirby]]. The parentheses are usually
dropped when used in the English language context, and the
underscore of the mouth may be extended as an [[intensifier]], e.g.
^___^ for very happy.
:R - cannot be mentioned(meme use) ===Mixture of western and East
Asian style=== Exposure to both western and East Asian style
emoticons or emoji through web blogs, instant messaging, and forums
featuring a blend of Western and Asian 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 a anime or
manga-styled [[sweat drop]], for example: ^_^' or >_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. ===Ideographic style=== {{See also|Jiong|zh:失意體前屈}} The
letter 囧 (U+56E7), which means
'bright'[http://baike.baidu.com/view/181979.htm Baidu: 囧], is also
used in Chinese and Taiwanese community for frowning
face.[http://tv.people.com.cn/BIG5/61602/7815716.html 生僻字大行其道
"囧"衍生出各種表情] It is also combined with posture emoticon Orz, such as
囧rz. The letter existed in [[Oracle bone script]], but its use as
emoticon was documented as early as
2005-01-20.[http://www.nownews.com/2005/01/20/327-1744028.htm
心情很orz嗎？ 網路象形文字幽默一下] Other ideographic variant for 囧 include 崮
(king 囧), 莔 (queen 囧), 商 (囧 with hat), 囧興 (turtle), 卣
([[Bomberman]]). The letter 槑 (U+69D1), which means 'plum', is used
to represent double of '呆' (dull), or further magnitude of
dullness.[http://baike.baidu.com/view/82855.htm Baidu: 槑] In
Chinese, normally full characters (as opposed to the stylistic use
of 槑) may be [[Reduplication#Chinese|duplicated]] to express
emphasis. ==2channel style== The Japanese language is usually
encoded using double-[[byte]] 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]]. Most kaomoji contain
[[Cyrillic]] and other foreign letters to create even more
complicated expressions analogous to [[ASCII art]]'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]].{{Citation needed|date=September
2008}} Users of [[2channel]] 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 (ASCII art)|Mona]]. ==Posture emoticons==
===Orz=== Orz (also seen as Or2, on_, OTZ, STO, JTO,{{cite
web|url=http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/07/all-about-orz.html|author=Boing
Boing|title=All about Orz|accessdate=2009-03-24}} _no, ＿冂○,
OTL,{{cite
web|url=http://www.dfnt.net/t/photo/your/craft_06suman.shtml
|title=みんなの作った ＿|￣|○クラフト "paper craft of orz"
>accessdate=2009-08-18 }} 囧rz, O7Z, _|7O, Sto, and Jto ) is a
Japanese 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 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: blogs have been devoted to
the emoticon, and URL shortening
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 an apology.
Multimedia variations
A portmanteau of emotion and sound, 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. Many
instant messaging clients automatically trigger sound effects in
response to specific emoticons.
Some services, such as MuzIcons, combine emoticons and Adobe Flash music player in a widget.
In 2004, The Trillian chat
application introduced an 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 and Paramount Home
Entertainment promoted the "emoticlip" as a form of viral marketing 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 and Java-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
 Patented drop down menu for composing
phone mail text message with emoticons.
In 2000 Despair, Inc. obtained a U.S.
trademark 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. They subsequently issued another press
release a month later in response to the reaction their claim had
generated.
A number of patent applications
have been filed on inventions that assist in communicating with
emoticons. A few of these have issued as US patents. , 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
was that the user saved on the number of keystrokes though this may
not address the obviousness criteria.
In
Finland , the emoticons :-), =), =(, :) and :( were trademarked in 2006 for use with various products
and services.
In 2008, Russian entrepreneur Oleg Teterin claimed to have been
granted the trademark on the ;-) emoticon. A license wouldn't "cost
that much - tens of thousands of dollars" for companies, but would
be free of charge for individuals.
See also
There are very simple ones that you see everywhere, like T_T
crying, or XD very happy, sometimes the o_O what the heck or wth
look. These are commonly used in IM's sometimes in texting and
sometimes in normal messaging on facebook or myspace for
example.
References
Notes
- See Fahlman's website for a reconstruction of the
entire thread
- Is That an Emoticon in 1862? - City Room Blog -
NYTimes.com
- Gregory Benford, A Scientist's Notebook:
net@fandom.com, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
Vol. 90, No. 6 (June 1996), p. 90
- Connected Earth: The growth of e-mail
- Cerulean Studios: The Creators of Trillian and Trillian
Pro IM Clients
- AdWeek Article about Emoticlip
- Animated Faces and Emoticons / Digital Elite
Inc.
- Schwartz, John. " Compressed Data: Don't Mind That Lawsuit, It's Just a
Joke," New York Times, January 29, 2001
- BBC News: Russian hopes to cash in on ;-)
Further reading
- Wolf, Alecia. 2000. "Emotional Expression Online: Gender
Differences in Emoticon Use." CyberPsychology & Behavior
3: 827-833.
External links
Examples
Japanese emoticons
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