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Smiley :-), article - 2003.

Updated 2006.

This article is print ready.

Because of specificity of the theme, this page is not completely AA+.

:-)   - if you look this little symbol starting from bottom and moving on to the top you will see a smiling face. Alongside the "@" character, it is the most famous trademark symbol of internet. It was invented by Scott E. Fahlman in the year of 1982., when he replied to thread in online discussion. He suggested what he thought would be the simplest way to express emotions of a person that is writing a piece of written material, in the most simple way possible, and to avoid any misunderstandings (a very frequent thing these days). The smiley became an irreplaceable internet tool to anyone who uses electronic media. You can find out more about it in the following text. At the bottom of this article you will find a comprehensive list of smileys.

Smiley on Fiji. Photo by Cris Watk.

Smi:-)ley

On the picture below you can see a symbol which shows a basic emotion known to every human being from the moment they are born. Ones race, belief system or state of mind have no bearing on it, because a smile is a universal expression. Besides the smile, there are also other universal facial expressions like anger, frown, sorrow, sadness and other, which don't require any skill or prior knowledge to be interpreted.

An universal emotion :-) - smile.

@text:

If you are a respected member of the global internet society, you are already familiar with all the etiquette rules relevant to that virtual surrounding, you are familiar with what is considered polite and what is considered as being rude. IN ANY CASE YOU SHOULD REALISE THAT IT IS NOT POLITE TO WRITE IN CAPITAL LETTERS because it looks like shouting. Cursing is also not a particularly smart thing to do; annoying people with unnecessary comments can also badly influence your online reputation. The basic usage of a smiley symbol is to show what your state of mind was in the moment of writing the text. Normal way of communicating with people is face to face and no one has any problems when communicating like that. You also don't encounter any problems when talking over the phone (well, mostly) because you can hear the tone of each others voice and thus you can guess the state of mind of the person you are talking with. Real problems emerge when communicating via text. Written language is a recent addition to human knowledge as it was invented a few thousand years ago (today we have some 3000 different languages and dialects, often with belonging systems for writing words down), in spite of its apparent lacking, writing has lived to see quite a boom in the recent 2-3 hundred years. What I want to say is that not everyone is capable of putting his thoughts into text and keep the correct and precise meaning. Tolstoy for instance, was an excellent writer - he didn't need to use emoticons (which is a name for all the symbols used to convey ones state of mind). Also, Tolstoy has written his "War and peace" 2 times, and spent quite a few years to get it right. In normal world, an average person wants to write a reply to an email, and he doesn't possess Tolstoy's writing skills, and he is still required to convey his meaning quickly and with satisfactory quality. To avoid misinterpretations, :-), :-( - and their analogous counterparts: :) and :( were invented.

The basic tools a clown uses in theater are basic
human emotions; smile, sorrow, anger...
Photo by Griszka Niewiadomski.

And who invented :-) ?

In the 1980s, when internet was in its beginning, people noticed several problems when it came to online communication over what was called BBS (bulletin board service) in the USA. Most of the topic threads were misinterpreted and ended up in flame. The main reason for this was that humorous remarks made by posters were not recognized as being humorous by other participants. This was happening because there were no facial expressions one could see and use them to decide whether something was serious or a joke. Many different symbols were introduced, like for an example \_/ for a smile or (#) for a joke but these symbols just didn't cut it. In one of the threads in 1982. Scott E. Fahlman made an observation that :-) and :-( signs could perhaps serve this purpose well. Other users approved of this idea and since that time the smileys became so widely spread that today even those people who don't use internet use smileys (in SMS messages for instance). I would recommend the original article for your reading pleasure because it will make you laugh. There's one other author of smileys; a journalist named Franklin Loufrani, but we are not talking about the ordinary ":-)" but about a yellow ball with eyes and a smile. That type of smiley is a bit older than our ":-)". It was used in its printed form in newspapers and it was invented in 1972.

Smiley mosaic. Photo by Alexander Rist.

The birth of smiley:

Additional smiley resources

• read the complete smiley joke thread
• the entire content of the bulletin board system for the year 1982.

• the Franklin Loufrani's smiley
• Smiley lore :-) Web pages by Scott E. Fahlman
• The first smiley :-) web pages by Mike Jones (one of the researchers who did the job of digging through the antique magnetic tapes in order to find who the original inventor of the smiley was)

When to use smiley?

The answer would be: "often, but not all the time" Everything :) you :) do :) too :) often :) can :) quickly :) lose :) its :) meaning :( You should follow these rules when you want to state what your state of mind is at the very moment of writing the text, therefore you will use smileys mostly on the internet – forums, news groups etc. It is not wise to use smileys in serious publications because they are not needed nor wanted there.

One mustn't forget the fact that a smiley doesn't always have to represent a facial expression, it can become whatever you want it to become, the variety of its possible usage is enormous but its purpose is always the same.

Oh my....! c:-O Photo by Jyn Meyer.

How to write :) ?

You can write it in many ways, but the most practical way is to use the keyboard *{;) It is impossible to ascertain how many smileys there are in existence because their number depends solely on the creativity of people using them. You can put together any symbols you want. Any character found on your keyboard can be used. :)><-*><(: this smiley, for and example was created for fun as it depicts a male and a female smiley together. -)o( is a mastodon smiley (because this is how a mastodon looks like when looked upon from above, it was invented for a web page where this text was originally published - "mastodont.tk"), and this one *-{;) I have invented while writing this text on my palm computer... As you can see the number of different smiley symbols is almost infinite but when you use more complicated ones you will have to provide an explanation .) (this is cyclops smiley - it has only one eye). Out of all these smileys, only 2 are the original ones and you can bet that everyone will understand them. They are :-) and :-) and their analogous twins :) and :( Considering the text orientation I think it would be best to write smileys from left to right ;) However, in special circumstances you are allowed to do whatever you want as long as it has meaning. (: looks ok, but :) is better. It would be wise to insert an additional blank space in front and following the smiley symbol to avoid making things lose meaning like in the following example: "I am 1888) cm tall". The smiley used in this sentence is the bug eyed smiley 8) and the person in question is actually only 188 cm tall. Also insert an additional space before or after punctuation symbols. One more example would be the usage of a cyclops smiley -> .). which in this example looks as if it has one tooth :) or, alternatively, it looks like a human face with a nose.

Russians in any case have a much wider selection of character than us. They can use latin characters as well as Cyrillic (and there's a lot of those) in the creation of smileys. I will also mention Chinese who use over 10.000 pictograms (which all constitute as being similar to a smiley as they all depict something). However, Arabs and Indians also have a lot of special characters to use, and then there is Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Swahili... :D

Oh yeah! :) Photo by John De Boer.

Final conclusion before smiley table:

Using smileys correctly may prove to be a problem sometimes, luckily for us this can be avoided easily if you follow these simple rules:

• the smiley you invented can represent whatever you want it to represent, but you have to provide an explanation
• not everyone understands smileys, internauts are the people most likely to understand various versions of smiley symbols. Before you use a "state of the art" smiley, think ahead, so you don't risk being misunderstood :)=
• in order to create a smiley one doesn't have to be extremely intelligent, but you have to use common sense. Think before you publish a new smiley.
• the nose is an optional component :-) there is no difference between a :-) or :)
• don't use :) in serious publications, it doesn't belong there
• don't use smiley to often

The list:

Usually it is hard to find a comprehensive list of smileys that actually is comprehensive. The smileys shown following this text have been neatly organized by using the resources on the internet and from my memory. I have included smileys which were created by the author of this text :), and also all the smileys that may come in handy when communicating over the internet. If, for any reason, you want to see a complete list of smileys please visit the web pages which listed below. There you will find detailed lists and catalogues of smileys :-) I think you will be able to find almost every smiley in existence on these lists

• the canonical smiley (and 1-line symbol) list
• helwig's smiley dictionary
• smiley-liste
• the unofficial smiley dictionary

The list of basic and most frequently used smileys:

Animals, plants and inanimate things:

Several smileys of my own creation:

There it is! :) Finito! Hope you found this article useful.

Mooooooh? Photo by Andrzej Pobiedzinski.

One final remark: Smiley symbols :-), :-( and any of its variations may be a problem to people who have a difficult time using computers due to physical shortcomings. On these Internet pages, every smiley has a graphic representation (a picture) but you can't notice it because it looks very much like the surrounding text. It's not always good to use a smiley, figure out who reads your publications and act accordingly.

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