Emoticon

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An emoticon is a text-based picture that shows a facial expression or mood using characters like punctuation marks, letters, and numbers. It helps you show how you feel without writing it out.

Origin and evolution:
- The modern idea is often traced to 1982, when computer scientist Scott Fahlman suggested the smiley :-) and the sad face :-( on a university bulletin board to show humor.
- In Japan, a different style called kaomoji grew in 1986, using a wider set of characters and not needing to be rotated. These are sometimes called verticons.
- In the late 1990s, as text messaging and the Internet spread, emoticons became very popular in texting, forums, and email. They gradually evolved into more elaborate graphic icons we now call emojis.

What they come in:
- ASCII emoticons: built from plain characters like punctuation and letters (for example, :) for happy, :( for sad, ;) for wink).
- Portrait or graphical emoticons: fuller faces that resemble a front-facing portrait.
- Kaomoji: Japanese-style emoticons using broader character sets, including many hands, eyes, and mouth shapes.
- Emojis: colorful pictures that express emotions, objects, and ideas. Emojis are the graphical successors to emoticons and are standardized in Unicode.

Common examples and meanings:
- :) or :-) — happy
- :( or :-( — sad
- ;) or ;-) — wink
- :D — big grin
- :P — tongue out
- <3 — heart
- - :O — surprised
- :/ — unsure or disappointed
- XD — laughing hard

Special versions and cultural notes:
- Orz and o7 are popular in Japan and online communities: Orz shows a kneeling figure, orz; o7 is a head with a saluting arm.
- Kaomoji from Japan use characters like (^_^) or (╯°□°）╯ for various moods.
- Korean emoticons use Hangul letters; Chinese emoticons sometimes include characters like 囧 for an embarrassed or shocked look, and Orz-style forms.
- Some keyboards and languages influence which eyes or mouths are used, so you’ll see tiny differences by country.

Emojis and today’s use:
- Emojis are the graphic family that grew from this text-based world. They are part of the Unicode standard, so they appear the same across devices.
- Many common emojis are, at heart, emotion-focused versions of emoticons. They’re now everywhere in texting, social media, and messaging.

In short, emoticons are the original way people showed feelings in writing, and they led to the colorful emoji language we use today.