| I'm sure you've seen, and probably even used a | | | | represents tongue in cheek. |
| smiley or emoticon at least once in your internet | | | | Today, smiley face symbols and emoticons have |
| experience. Whether its been an actual picture, or | | | | become extremely popular in digital |
| just a series of characters like:-), you've seen it! | | | | communication and have evolved from simple |
| You may be surprised to find out how and why | | | | character sequences to simple static images and |
| these "smileys" have evolved in online | | | | nowadays 3-dimensional animated smileys. You'll |
| communication. Well, it should be noted that | | | | see support for smileys in all modern email |
| psychologists have discovered that 90% of | | | | providers (example: Hotmail, Yahoo!, Gmail) and all |
| human communication is non-verbal (that's | | | | instant messenger chat applications (example: MSN |
| probably not surprising). A lot of communication is | | | | messenger, AOL messenger, yahoo messenger, |
| perceived through body language, tone, gestures, | | | | Skype). |
| etc. | | | | The popular blog engine, WordPress also has built |
| On the internet, whether it's in a forum, blog, | | | | in support to convert character sequences to |
| email, or instant messenger chat, there's no | | | | images (which can be a pain sometimes for |
| mechanism to convey these "non verbal" signals. | | | | bloggers, but this can be easily disabled). |
| Hence, smileys! Smileys and emoticons are used | | | | It's actually cool to learn how something so |
| to confer emotion no matter what it is, sarcasm, | | | | seemingly meaningless such as smiley faces can |
| jokes, anger, sadness, bashfulness, playful, etc. | | | | actually have deep psychological implications in |
| The first noted emoticon ever noted is ":-J" which | | | | communication. |