Smile and the world smiles at you!

Well, maybe not - sometimes you get a weird look back.

But on internet we have these small things that are called smilies that can do the smiling for us.
Or - they are more correctly called emoticons, because Smiley is a registered trademark for those that makes those real big yellow things (http://www.smileyworld.com/) , and also because this characters can express more emotions than smiling.

First was of course the legendary :-) and :-( that was invented back in the early 1980-s by Scott E Fahlman (19 September, 1982 to be exact) and then I guess the ;-) for a wink and :-/ for a little more worried thought.

There are sometimes versions without the hyphen, that is :) :( ;) and :/ - but to me they look a little goofy.

But there soon came more - big laugh :-D , cool one B-) and the shocked one :-o (or :-O ) - the neutral :- and the amused one. :-p.

These kinds of emoticons are used especially at IRC and in email. On forums and IM-clients they are usually replaced with a more graphical version. Of these there are millions. Some of them are also animated.

The basic ones are of course: and - corresponding to those above.
Others are: .

Some of my favourites among the old style are the depressed one and the suspicious one and the very sarcastic rolleyes .

More and more you can see the bigger versions with a little shading to make them look 3D and some are even animated.


Others that I find very accurate in their expressions are:


There are lots more, but I think you have the idea.

Some people thinks that these are distracting and I agree when they are used too much. But once or twice per paragraph can be ok, or at least once or twice per message.

Pictures do sometimes say more than words.

Links:
http://www.smileyworld.com/emoticons/ -- huge list of more or less used emoticons.
http://www.smileyworld.com/emoticons/story.asp -- the history of emoticons
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/sefSmiley.htm - Scott tells the story himself

http://web1.prag025.server4you.de/ - german site with lots of graphical emoticons.
(WARNING: Lots of popups and cookies on this side so enter only if you are protected.)
http://www.my-smileys.de/ - another german site - same here, lots of icons but popups etc.
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/atil/forum/s.htm - french site with 1200+ animés