How to Create a Emoticon

A happy face emoticon created by a colon, dash and a closed parentheses.

Emoticons are a way to express emotions through icons (hence the word emoticon) on the web. They are popularly used in almost every instant messaging service and are comprised of basic text. Different combination of text characters are used to create an almost endless amount of emoticons to express different emotions and sometimes even objects, people and ideas. Creating an emoticon is fairly simple and is only bound by the limits of your imagination.

Instructions

1. Look at the letters, numbers and miscellaneous characters on your keyboard. All of these characters will be your building blocks to create an emoticon.

2. Start combining different letters, numbers and other text characters to create an icon that expresses your emotion. For example, you may select the colon " : " and type a closed parentheses " ) " after it to create the simplest and most popular emoticon, a smiley face: :)

3. Look up special characters, such as alt codes, in order to build your arsenal of building blocks of characters to use to create new emoticons. For example, the alt code "Alt+7" (holding down the "Alt" key and pressing 7 on the numeric pad) will create a black dot. You can use these dots in combination with other characters to create different emoticons. Here is an example using the "Alt+7" dots and an underscore to create a face: •_•

References

• Penn State: Windows - Alt Key Numeric Codes
• Cool Smileys: List of Text Emoticons -- The Ultimate Resource