From the Chronicle News Blog...
...it will be 25 years ago tomorrow that Mr. Fahlman, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, invented the digital smiley face.
After a colleague joked about a contaminated elevator on an electronic bulletin board, Mr. Fahlman had his eureka moment: He recommended that future quipsters mark their jokes with ":-)" to make sure no one misconstrued their comments.
What great blessings the emoticon has brought to our society! Although I do think the Abraham Lincoln emoticon is just a little too much:
-- "==):-)=" --
Happy birthday, little emoticon! Many happy returns! :-)
More like this
tags: Guide to Asian Emoticons, online life,
Last week we asked readers to rate a set of statements they might see on Twitter. The premise of our study was that sometimes it's difficult to decide whether someone is insulting you or complimenting you.
Have you wondered if the subtle and not so subtle differences in the way people, say from India and USA, conduct themselves? Differences in facial expressions, walking, use of emoticons in writing...
The emoticon for "smile" in most western cultures is this :). One of the ScienceBloggers does it backwards (: (can you guess who?), but the symbol is essentially the same. In Japan, however, the smile is depicted like this: ^_^.