How to Make Smiley Faces on IM

Smiley faces let people know you're in a good mood.

A smiley face is an icon commonly used on Internet messengers to convey happiness or joy. A smiley face is a stylized representation of the human happy face. They're usually yellow, although they come in other colors as well. Smiley faces have small black dots for the eyes, a dot for a nose and a half circle for the smile. You can make smiley faces on MSN messenger, AOL messenger and Yahoo! messenger using one technique.

Instructions

1. Open the messenger window and click on a person you want to talk to.

2. Put your cursor in the message field. Enter a colon by holding down the shift key and pressing the semicolon key. It's located next to the "L."

   You'll end up typing a colon or the eyes of the smiley face.

3. Press the hyphen key, located next to the number zero, to enter the nose.

4. Enter a closing parenthesis for the smiling mouth by holding down "Shift" and pressing the key for the number zero.

5. Press "Enter." Your smiley face will appear in the messenger.

References

• Sherv: The History of Emoticons and the Smiley Face
• Computer Tricks: Yahoo Messenger Shortcut Keys
• Microsoft Office: Insert Emoticons.