Don't Take Me Seriously - Book - Page 196
Featured commentary
It’s the invasion of the emoticons
I
f you’ve only recently come
out from under your rock, you
may not be familiar with the
term “emoticon.” But, even so, you
couldn’t have escaped finding a
“happy face” or two in some email
or text that was sent you in recent
years.
That happy face is the bestknown and most-used emoticon
around. Typed with a colon,
followed by a hyphen, followed
by a closing parenthesis — :-) —
it makes a sideways face with a
smile. Now, you can also leave out
the nose, or hyphen, for a short
form of the happy face — :) —
which seems so much friendlier
to me, and is the one my Word
program wants to automatically
replace with an actual, round
happy face character.
As you might surmise,
“emoticon” is a melding of the
words “emotion” and “icon,” and
the dark, but whatever.)
Jim in This
topic has been keeping me up
for quite some time now, and
WALKER nights
so, this week, as a respite from more
DON’T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY
while I caught onto the happy face
version(s) some time ago, I have
only recently become aware of the
multitude of these little guys out
there in popular use. And there are
more showing up all the time.
My real eye-opening began with
one sent me by my daughter, which
was the colon with a capital P after
it — :P — which, upon querying
her about, I learned stood for a face
sticking its tongue out at me.
Soon after, and probably as a
result of her reading one of my
more pessimistic columns, I got
a colon with a forward slash — :/
— which, I learned, represents a
face of concern or worry. (To me, it
looks like someone put lipstick on
serious issues, I explore the curious
and expanding use of these things,
this invasion of the emoticons.
First, a little history: I read that
emoticons (before they knew they
were emoticons) have been around
since the 1800s, and supposedly
one was found in an 1862 transcript
of an Abraham Lincoln speech,
which contained — ;) — which is
the equivalent of a winking face
today. That being thrown up for
debate, I read the :-) emoticon was
officially proposed to indicate jokes
in 1982, along with :-( to indicate
“not jokes.” This latter or its short
form — :( — is the “sad face” now.
Let’s break down a few of the
cutest of these little buggers.
Emotional: The emotion-related
emoticons are probably the most
numerous (surprise). In addition to
the :), :( and ;) already mentioned,
there is :’ — which indicates a
smirk, ;;) — which is for flirting
by batting the eyelashes, :* is for a
kiss and :-X is a big, wet kiss,
