Text 14. Emoticons

The word emoticon comes from a combination of two words: emotion and icon and it is a sequence of characters that is intended to represent a human face and its appearance or emotion. The basic form contains eyes [: ], perhaps the nose [ – ], and the mouth, which can be happy [) ] or sad [ (]. People also add hair, beards, glasses, etc. depending on the situation. In the west emoticons are written from left to right, so the hair or eyes are normally first, followed by a nose and then the mouth. If you put your head on one side, towards your left shoulder, you can recognize them more easily.

An early example of using text to represent a face appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in 1953 to advertise the film Lili: ‘Today – You’ll laugh:) You’ll cry:(You’ll love <3 Lili ’.

People from East Asia often use a style of emoticons known as verticons (vertical + icon) or ‘kaomoji’ in Japanese, which literally means ‘face letters’. You can recognize these emoticons ‘straight on’, i.e. without turning your head to one side. The style of these faces is similar to the style in Japanese anime and manga comic books.

Nowadays people often use emoticons in email messages but people shouldn’t use emoticons in more formal situations. One reason is because some programs automatically replace emoticons with images. For example, one man was discussing his department’s financial plan by e-mail with his boss. He wrote 401 (k) in his email (k = £ 1,000), but the software automatically replaced (k) with a pair of lips giving a big kiss, and that’s what his boss saw instead of 401 (k)!