What are Emoticons?
The word emoticon is a combination of the words emotion and icon. Emoticons are used online to covey intonation or voice inflection, bodily gestures and emotion behind statements that might otherwise be misinterpreted. The most common emoticon is a smiley face, made with the colon for eyes, and the left parenthesis as the smile, viewed at a 90-degree angle. 🙂 Sometimes a dash is used between the eyes and mouth to indicate a nose. 🙂 This emoticon is normally used to convey lightheartedness, happiness, facetiousness or joking. To see the difference an emoticon can make, just look at the following two statements: Yeah, James, you looked like a real geek. or… Yeah, James, you looked like a real geek. 🙂 Whether or not James would consider a being a “geek” a badge of honor or an insult, the first statement minus the emoticon looks like it is surely intended to be an insult. The second statement, however, with its smiling face is very clearly intended to be taken in a playful manner and
Emoticons are a combination of keystrokes which form a picture relating to a feeling. The word emoticon is derived from the two words, emotion and icon. Emoticons can be used in any communication over the Internet but particularly popular with chat rooms and instant messaging. Emoticons are also often used in the short message service (SMS) service provided through mobile phones.
