How to Create IM Emoticons

Spice up your instant messages (and email) with popular emoticons. Popular emoticons use combinations of keys on the alphabetic and numeric keyboard to generate symbols that represent words, phrases and emotions. They are easy to create and fun to use. Put smiley faces, frowns, winks and more in your IM communications, with a few simple steps.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Learn about the most popular emoticons at the Helio website. You can find keyboard combinations for text emoticons and some etiquette tips for using emoticons in messages of any kind.

2. Find a cheat sheet for text emoticons at the Windweaver website. The site has an extensive list of symbols that you can use to express feelings, phrases and common sayings.

3. Check the settings in your IM program to see if text and graphic emoticons can be used from a preset menu. Since emoticons are so popular, some instant messenger programs have built them into the menu already. You can use "hotkeys" to create an emoticon or you may be able to select them from a menu box.

4. Open your instant messenger program and type your text. The emoticon can be placed anywhere in the IM. Most people add them to the end of a message. Some people use an emoticon instead of typing text.

5. Make graphic and animated emoticons with key code combinations for popular messaging programs. Gtalk, Yahoo messenger, AOL messenger, MSN and Windows messenger provide user instructions for their specific programs. Your IM or email program's features determine which options you can use.

6. Experiment and create additional symbols or text emoticons in some programs by using American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) code combinations that use the "ALT" key and numbers. They can help you make unique characters and accents. These codes have been around forever.

Tips & Warnings

• Most text emoticons display as typed, across platforms. Some graphic emoticons will not display correctly if the receiver is using a different IM program.
• Microsoft Office users have the option of inserting symbols and special characters that are the equivalent of popular emoticons by selecting insert "Symbol" in the menu.

Resources

• Visit Helio Social to learn how to use emoticons.
• Get a list of popular text emoticons at Windweaver.
• Learn to create ASCII code symbols.