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emoticon: /eeˇmoh´tiˇkon/, n. [common] An ASCII glyph used to indicate an emotional state in email
or news. Although originally intended mostly as jokes, emoticons (or some
other explicit humor 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: (These may become more comprehensible if you
tilt your head sideways, to the left.) The first two listed 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. The invention of the original smiley and frowney emoticons is
generally credited to Scott Fahlman at CMU in 1982. 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.” In September
2002 the original post was
recovered. There is a rival claim by one Kevin McKenzie, who seems to have
proposed the smiley on the MsgGroup mailing list, April 12 1979. It seems
likely these two inventions were independent. Users of the PLATO
educational system
report using emoticons composed from overlaid dot-matrix graphics
in the 1970s. Note for the newbie: 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.
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