What is the Definition of a Smilie?
Emoticons are representations of facial expressions or emotions using various characters from the keyboard. The "smilie" (an alternate spelling of the word "smiley") is the most popular emoticon. In addition to being the most widely recognized, the smilie is also used more than any other emoticon.
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History
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The smiley face took on a symbolic status in 1964 when a man named Harvey Ball invented and began marketing it. This first incarnation of the smiley face was the familiar yellow circle with black dots for eyes and a black upturned smile. In 1970, the phrase "Have a nice day" was added to most representations of Ball's original smiley face. Shortly after the phrase was added, smiley face buttons, bumper stickers, posters and t-shirts became wildly popular. In 1971 alone 50 million smiley face buttons were sold in the United States.
In the mid- to late-1990s when communication via the Internet and cell phones became popular, the smiley face took on a new importance as a way to convey emotions. The first iteration of the digital smiley took the form of a colon accompanied with a closing parenthesis.
Function
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Emoticons are intended to serve as facsimiles of facial expressions. As such, a digital smilie is meant to convey the same meaning as an actual, physical smile. Just like the meaning of a smile varies according to context, so too does a smilie. Typically, a smilie is used to indicate that the preceding statement was made in a playful nature. For example, "Fat chance getting you out of bed at 7:00am, lazy bones :-)". The smilie can also be used to communicate a general happiness. For example, "I just got a 98 percent on my chemistry test :-)". A smilie can also be used for sarcasm, as in "Oh, I love getting up at 5:00am :-)". Smilies can be used to display a gleeful schadenfreude, too, "Looks like someone's going to finally get their come uppance :-)".
Some use smilies to soften the tone on criticism: "i think this still needs a couple of revisions :-)". The smilie serves as a hybrid between a facial expression and punctuation. The smilie can change the meaning of a sentence as heavily as a question mark, exclamation mark or a reassuring smile. -
Significance
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The smilie is particularly useful in text-based communications for two main reasons. Today, much of text-based communication is done quickly, heavily relying on shorthand. Smilies serve as a shortcut for conveying emotion that can be typed quickly and interpreted. Also, due to the lack of face-to-face interaction, much of the nuance of everyday conversation is lost in text. Though you may not notice it, much is communicated non-verbally when you speak with someone in person or even over the phone. Body language, tone of voice and facial expressions contribute volumes to our words and on the Internet, these aspects are nonexistent. Emoticons, such as the smilie, work to diffuse any confusion due to the absence of physical cues. For example, a statement such as "You are such a jerk" can understandably construed as a hostile remark, unless accompanied by a smilie, in which case it could be assumed that the comment was meant to be playful.
Types
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Many instant messaging services also offer their graphical smilies to be used within their software. Yahoo! and AOL Instant Messenger are two of the most popular messaging services that offer drop-down lists of smilies with the possibility to add third-party custom smilies. Since 1995 all versions of Microsoft Word will automatically convert :) into J. The Wingdings font in Word also has a smilie keystroke, which is the capitol letter J, J.
Considerations
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While widely accepted in casual conversation, smilies are not considered appropriate for formal communications. Just as shorthand and slang are likely to appear unprofessional, smilies do not project an air of seriousness. Further note that some websites and messaging programs will not accept smilies, as certain brackets interfere with HTML and other code. Specifically, the triangle bracket will disrupt HTML code if the website is not coded properly.
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