What are Emoticons?
• Emoticons are entertaining icons that can be used to describe your emotion or mood for the moment, or just a playful means to deliver your point. • To add an emoticon to your conversation, just click on the orange “emoticon” button under the Conversation Window and select the one you want. • Or you can type in the emoticon shortcut. Click on “…” at the bottom right of the emoticon display form to see the emoticon keyboard shortcuts. • The emoticon will automatically show up in the Typing Window at your cursor and will be sent to your Buddie when you click “send” or hit “enter.
Emoticons are ASCII glyphs originally designed to show an emotional state in plain text messages. Over time they have turned into an art form as well. In most cases, emoticons are constructed to be viewed by tilting your head left so the right side of the emoticon is at the bottom of the “picture.” These simple emoticons have, over time, merged with artwork produced as ASCII characters. This site does not catalog that. If interested, perform a Google search on the term “ASCII art” and you should find multiple sites that host such collections. Note: Some programs allow you to type in text and a graphic emoticon shows up. This does not apply here. The emoticons here are emoticons you type in. Nothing more. Please don’t ask how to “activate” them; there is nothing here to activate. Near as any research can pinpoint, the emoticon was invented by Scott E. Fahlman on 19 September 1982 in a message posted on Carnegie Mellon University bulletin board systems. Fahlman is quoted as saying “I pro
