emoticon

/ee-moh'ti-kon/ An ASCII glyph used to indicate an

emotional state in electronic mail or news. Although

originally intended mostly as jokes, emoticons (or some other

explicit humour indication) are virtually required under

certain circumstances in high-volume text-only communication

forums such as Usenet; the lack of verbal and visual cues

can otherwise cause what were intended to be humorous,

sarcastic, ironic, or otherwise non-100%-serious comments to

be badly misinterpreted (not always even by newbies),

resulting in arguments and flame wars.

Hundreds of emoticons have been proposed, but only a few are

in common use. These include:

:-) "smiley face" (for humour, laughter,

friendliness, occasionally sarcasm)

:-( "frowney face" (for sadness, anger, or upset)

;-) "half-smiley" (ha ha only serious); also

known as "semi-smiley" or "winkey face".

:-/ "wry face"

These may become more comprehensible if you tilt your head

sideways, to the left. The first two are by far the most

frequently encountered. Hyphenless forms of them are common

on CompuServe, GEnie, and BIX; see also bixie. On

Usenet, "smiley" is often used as a generic term synonymous

with emoticon, as well as specifically for the happy-face

emoticon.

It appears that the emoticon was invented by one Scott Fahlman

on the CMU bboard systems around 1980. He later wrote: "I

wish I had saved the original post, or at least recorded the

date for posterity, but I had no idea that I was starting

something that would soon pollute all the world's

communication channels." [GLS confirms that he remembers

this original posting].

As with exclamation marks, overuse of the smiley is a mark of

loserhood! More than one per paragraph is a fairly sure sign

that you've gone over the line.

[Jargon File]

(1994-12-02)