Emoticon
Before emojis filled our screens with vibrant expressions, there were emoticons—simple combinations of punctuation marks and letters that brought emotion to the cold, hard text of early digital communication. Far from being a modern invention, the idea of using symbols to convey feelings has a surprisingly rich and contested history, stretching back centuries. Join us as we uncover the fascinating journey of these tiny textual titans, from ancient doubts to their modern-day dominance. The concept of using typographic symbols to express emotion predates the digital age, with debatable examples appearing as early as the 17th century. Computer scientist Scott Fahlman is widely credited with formalizing the modern text-based emoticon, establishing a protocol for clarity in digital messages. Emoticons evolved from simple text art into diverse graphical forms and ultimately paved the way for the global phenomenon of emojis, forever changing how we communicate feelings online.
AI Summary
Before emojis filled our screens with vibrant expressions, there were emoticons—simple combinations of punctuation marks and letters that brought emotion to the cold, hard text of early digital communication. Far from being a modern invention, the idea of using symbols to convey feelings has a surprisingly rich and contested history, stretching back centuries. Join us as we uncover the fascinating journey of these tiny textual titans, from ancient doubts to their modern-day dominance.
- The concept of using typographic symbols to express emotion predates the digital age, with debatable examples appearing as early as the 17th century.
- Computer scientist Scott Fahlman is widely credited with formalizing the modern text-based emoticon, establishing a protocol for clarity in digital messages.
- Emoticons evolved from simple text art into diverse graphical forms and ultimately paved the way for the global phenomenon of emojis, forever changing how we communicate feelings online.
The Birth of the Digital Smile
For many, the story of the emoticon truly begins in 1982 at Carnegie Mellon University. Imagine a time when online communication lacked the subtle cues of face-to-face conversation—humor and sarcasm were easily misunderstood, leading to confusion and even alarm.
It was computer scientist Scott Fahlman who proposed a simple, elegant solution: use punctuation marks to signal intent. A simple :-) would indicate humor, while :-( would convey seriousness. This small innovation was born from a very real incident involving a misinterpreted mercury spill warning.
Ancient Roots and Lingering Doubts
While Fahlman formalized the modern emoticon, the idea of using typographical art to express emotion wasn't entirely new. Some historians point to a peculiar line in Robert Herrick's 1648 poem: "Tumble me down, and I will sit Upon my ruins, (smiling yet:)." Could that colon and bracket truly be an early smiley? Experts remain skeptical, noting the fluid punctuation rules of the 17th century.
Even Abraham Lincoln's transcribed speeches from 1862 contain a curious notation: "(applause and laughter ;)". Was this a typo, a typesetting quirk, or a genuinely intended winking face? The debate continues, highlighting how challenging it is to definitively trace the earliest origins.
More concrete examples emerge from the late 19th century. In 1881, newspapers like Warsaw's Kurjer Warszawski and the American satirical magazine Puck published 'typographical art' using punctuation to represent joy, melancholy, indifference, and astonishment. These were deliberate attempts to convey expression through text.
Fast forward to 1912, when author Ambrose Bierce facetiously suggested a bracket symbol for 'cachinnation'—loud laughter. Later, in 1969, even the renowned novelist Vladimir Nabokov expressed a wish for a "special typographical sign for a smile—some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket."
On the early PLATO IV computer system in the 1970s, students at the University of Illinois experimented with pictograms resembling smiling faces. These were early digital forerunners, showing a clear desire for visual emotional cues in electronic messages.
The ASCII Revolution Spreads
Fahlman's protocol quickly took hold. Within months, his :-) and :-( spread across the ARPANET and Usenet, the internet's predecessors. The use of ASCII symbols—a standardized set of codes for characters—meant these text faces could be displayed on virtually any computer, fueling their rapid adoption.
By the mid-1990s, the text emoticon became a ubiquitous part of digital communication. The Smiley Company even launched a 'Smiley Dictionary' website in 1996, cataloging over 500 ASCII emoticons. Interestingly, this catalog often omitted the 'nose' hyphen, favoring the simpler :) over :-).
Research has shown that this 'noseless' version, :), became significantly more common, particularly among younger users. Some linguists interpret this as a form of 'covert prestige'—a subtle way for in-group members to differentiate themselves by adopting a non-standard, yet widely understood, variant.
From Text to Graphics: The Rise of Portrait Emoticons
The late 1990s saw a new evolution: graphical emoticons. Nicolas Loufrani began converting text designs into visual representations, which he called 'portrait emoticons' because they resembled faces from the front, like a painting. These GIF files debuted online in 1998.
Loufrani's work not only visualized existing text emoticons but also introduced new elements, like hand gestures. These graphical icons were crucial precursors to the modern emoji, expanding beyond simple facial expressions to include objects, weather, and animals.
The widespread adoption of SMS text messaging and the internet further popularized these visual cues. Soon, companies like Google and Apple recognized the growing importance of visual communication, leading to a collaborative effort to standardize emoji under the Unicode Technical Committee by 2009.
Today, the terms 'emoticon,' 'emoji,' and 'smiley' are often used interchangeably, though emoticons specifically refer to text-based expressions. The line blurs as many of the most popular emojis are, in fact, graphical representations of traditional emoticons, reflecting their enduring power to convey emotion.
In a testament to their cultural significance, the original emoticons created by Scott Fahlman in 1982 were even auctioned as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) in 2021, selling for a staggering $237,500. A year later, The Smiley Company followed suit, auctioning its own original graphical emoticons as NFTs.
A World of Styles
Western Emoticons
In Western cultures, emoticons are typically read sideways, with the eyes on the left. Common variations include the sad face :(, extreme sadness :((, weeping :'(, a blush :">, a wink ;), a grin :D, tongue out :P, and shock :O. Combinations like <3 for a heart or </3 for a broken heart are also popular.
Regional differences also exist. In Scandinavia, the =) smiley is common. In countries using the Cyrillic alphabet, a simple right parenthesis ) can signify a smile, with multiple parentheses )))) indicating greater amusement, often omitting the colon because of keyboard layouts.
Kaomoji: The Japanese Style
Japanese emoticons, known as kaomoji, developed somewhat independently and are designed to be read upright without rotation. They often use a wider range of Japanese characters and ASCII symbols, allowing for incredibly expressive faces that emphasize the eyes. For instance, (^^) for happiness or (><) for pain.
More modern, Westernized kaomojis, popularized in online subcultures, have even dropped the traditional brackets, giving us charming expressions like owo, uwu, and TwT, often seen in anime and furry communities.
Other Unique Styles
From the Japanese discussion board 2channel came unique emoticons using various scripts, such as ಠಠ (the 'look of disapproval') from Kannada, which quickly spread to Western sites. Korean emoticons utilize Hangul letters, with ㅅ, ㅁ, or ㅂ for mouths/noses, and ㅇ, ㅎ, or ㅍ for eyes, creating expressions like ㅜㅜ for crying.
Chinese ideographic emoticons sometimes incorporate characters like 囧 (jiong), meaning 'patterned window,' which strikingly resembles a bewildered or distressed face. It can be combined with 'posture emoticons' like 囧rz.
Posture Emoticons
Beyond facial expressions, some emoticons depict full-body postures. The most famous is 'Orz'—composed of an 'o' for the head, 'r' for the arms and body, and 'z' for the legs—representing a person kneeling or bowing in resignation, despair, or even grudging respect.
Another common posture emoticon is 'o7' (or 'O7'), where the 'o' is the head and the '7' forms a saluting arm, often used to express respect or loyalty.
Beyond Text: Multimedia and Property
The evolution didn't stop at graphics. 'Emotisounds' are brief audio clips accompanying messages, while 'emotiblips' and 'emoticlips' are short video snippets. These multimedia additions aim to further enrich the emotional subtext of digital communication, blurring the lines between text, sound, and vision.
Even these humble symbols have become entwined with intellectual property rights. Companies have sought trademarks for specific emoticons, like Despair, Inc.'s registration for the frowny face :-( on greeting cards. However, courts in various countries, including Finland and Russia, have often ruled against trademarking basic emoticons, citing their common usage.
The Unicode Connection
The Unicode Standard plays a critical role in standardizing digital text, and it's where many graphical emoticons find their home as part of the broader emoji set. Early Unicode versions already included basic smileys like a white frowning face and a white smiling face, paving the way for the rich emotional lexicon we use today.
Article
Emoticon
An emoticon portraying a smiling face
Examples of kaomoji smileys
An emoticon (, ə-MOH-tə-kon, rarely , ih-MOTT-ih-kon), portmanteau of emotion and icon, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers and letters—to express a person's feelings, mood or reaction, without needing to describe it in detail.
ASCII emoticons can be traced back hundreds of years with various one-off uses. The protocol as a way to use them to communicate emotion in conversations is credited to computer scientist Scott Fahlman, who proposed what came to be known as "smileys"—:-) and :-(—in a message on the bulletin board system (BBS) of Carnegie Mellon University in 1982. In Western countries, emoticons are usually written at a right angle to the direction of the text. Users from Japan popularized a kind of emoticon called kaomoji, using Japanese's larger character sets. This style arose on ASCII NET of Japan in 1986. They are also known as verticons (from vertical emoticon) due to their readability without rotations. This is often seen as the 1st generation of emoticons.
The second generation began when computing became more common in the west, and people began replacing the previous ASCII art with actual emoticon icons or designs. One term used to define these types of emoticons compared to ASCII was portrait emoticons, as portrait emoticons are meant to resemble a face from the front like a portrait painting. The use of these emoticons became prevalent when SMS mobile text messaging and the Internet became widespread in the late 1990s, emoticons became increasingly popular and were commonly used in texting, Internet forums and emails. Over time, the designs became more elaborate and emoticons such as 🙂 by Unicode became commonly referred to as Emoticons. They have played a significant role in communication as technology for communication purposes advanced and increased in use. Emoticons today convey non-verbal cues of language, such as facial expressions but also hand gestures, with The Smiley Company stating in interviews that emoticons now allow for greater emotional understanding in writing when emoticons are used. Emoticons were the precursors to modern emojis not just for facial expressions, but also replacing categories like weather, sports and animals.
History
ASCII art and faces (pre-1981)
Cover of the French magazine Le Charivari, text of a legal ruling against it in the shape of a pear, 1834
In 1648, poet Robert Herrick wrote, "Tumble me down, and I will sit Upon my ruins, (smiling yet:)." Herrick's work predated any other recorded use of brackets as a smiling face by around 200 years. However, experts doubted the inclusion of the colon in the poem was deliberate and if it was meant to represent a smiling face. English professor Alan Jacobs argued that "punctuation, in general, was unsettled in the seventeenth century ... Herrick was unlikely to have consistent punctuational practices himself, and even if he did he couldn't expect either his printers or his readers to share them." 17th century typography practice often placed colons and semicolons within parentheses, including 14 instances of ":)" in Richard Baxter's 1653 Plain Scripture Proof of Infants Church-membership and Baptism.
Precursors to modern emoticons have existed since the 19th century. The National Telegraphic Review and Operators Guide in April 1857 documented the use of the number 73 in Morse code to express "love and kisses" (later reduced to the more formal "best regards"). Dodge's Manual in 1908 documented the reintroduction of "love and kisses" as the number 88. New Zealand academics Joan Gajadhar and John Green comment that both Morse code abbreviations are more succinct than modern abbreviations such as LOL.
Transcript of Abraham Lincoln's speech in 1862
The transcript of one of Abraham Lincoln's speeches in 1862 recorded the audience's reaction as: "(applause and laughter ;)". There has been some debate whether the glyph in Lincoln's speech was a typo, a legitimate punctuation construct or the first emoticon. Linguist Philip Seargeant argues that it was a simple typesetting error.
"Typographical art" published in the March 5, 1881, issue of Kurjer Warszawski
Emoticons in the satirical magazine Puck on March 30, 1881
Before March 1881, the examples of "typographical art" appeared in at least three newspaper articles, including Kurjer warszawski (published in Warsaw) from March 5, 1881, using punctuation to represent the emotions of joy, melancholy, indifference and astonishment.
Telegraphische Zeichenkunst in the German Deutsche Postzeitung, November 16, 1896
In a 1912 essay titled "For Brevity and Clarity", American author Ambrose Bierce suggested facetiously that a bracket could be used to represent a smiling face, proposing "an improvement in punctuation" with which writers could convey cachinnation, loud or immoderate laughter: "it is written thus ‿ and presents a smiling mouth. It is to be appended, with the full stop, to every jocular or ironical sentence". In a 1936 Harvard Lampoon article, writer Alan Gregg proposed combining brackets with various other punctuation marks to represent various moods. Brackets were used for the sides of the mouth or cheeks, with other punctuation used between the brackets to display various emotions: (-) for a smile, (--) (showing more "teeth") for laughter, (#) for a frown and () for a wink. An instance of text characters representing a sideways smiling and frowning face could be found in the New York Herald Tribune on March 10, 1953, promoting the film Lili starring Leslie Caron.
The September 1962 issue of MAD magazine included an article titled "Typewri-toons". The piece, featuring typewriter-generated artwork credited to "Royal Portable", was entirely made up of repurposed typography, including a capital letter P having a bigger 'bust' than a capital I, a lowercase b and d discussing their pregnancies, an asterisk on top of a letter to indicate the letter had just come inside from snowfall, and a classroom of lowercase n's interrupted by a lowercase h "raising its hand". A further example attributed to a Baltimore Sunday Sun columnist appeared in a 1967 article in Reader's Digest, using a dash and right bracket to represent a tongue in one's cheek: —). Prefiguring the modern "smiley" emoticon, writer Vladimir Nabokov told an interviewer from The New York Times in 1969, "I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile—some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question."
In the 1970s, the PLATO IV computer system was launched. It was one of the first computers used throughout educational and professional institutions, but rarely used in a residential setting. On the computer system, a student at the University of Illinois developed pictograms that resembled different smiling faces. Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope stated this likely took place in 1972, and they claimed these to be the first emoticons.
ASCII emoticons - First generation (1982–mid-1990s)
In 1982, Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Scott Fahlman is generally credited with the protocol of communicating and portraying emotion in written text. The use of ASCII symbols, a standard set of codes representing typographical marks, was essential to allow the symbols to be displayed on any computer. In Carnegie Mellon's bulletin board system, Fahlman proposed colon–hyphen–right bracket :-) as a label for "attempted humor" to try to solve the difficulty of conveying humor or sarcasm in plain text. Fahlman sent the following message after an incident where a humorous warning about a mercury spill in an elevator was misunderstood as serious:
Within a few months, the smiley had spread to the ARPANET and Usenet. Other suggestions on the forum included an asterisk and an ampersand &, the latter meant to represent a person doubled over in laughter, as well as a percent sign % and a pound sign #. Scott Fahlman suggested that not only could his emoticon communicate emotion, but also replace language. Since the 1990s, emoticons (colon, hyphen and bracket) have become integral to digital communications, and have inspired a variety of other emoticons, including the "winking" face using a semicolon ;-), XD, a representation of the Face with Tears of Joy emoji and the acronym "LOL".
In 1996, The Smiley Company was established by Nicolas Loufrani and his father Franklin as a way of commercializing the smiley trademark. As part of this, The Smiley Dictionary website was launched and had a focus on ASCII emoticons, where available emoticons were catalogued. In total more than 500 were recorded. Notably this catalog removed the dash ( - ) for a nose and just had eyes and a mouth. The reasoning behind this was to make the ASCII emoticons more like the smiley, which resulted in :) instead of :-). The shortening or redesign of ASCII emoticons has not been covered in enough depth to know where the shorter versions originated, but The Smiley Dictionary could have as a minimum influenced the way ASCII emoticons are used today. Many other people did similar to Loufrani from 1995 onwards, including David Sanderson creating the book Smileys in 1997. James Marshall also hosted an online collection of ASCII emoticons that he completed in 2008. In 1998, the book Le Dico Smiley was also published.
A researcher at Stanford University surveyed the emoticons used in four million Twitter messages and found that the smiling emoticon without a hyphen "nose" :) was much more common than the original version with the hyphen :-). Linguist Vyvyan Evans argues that this represents a shift in usage by younger users as a form of covert prestige: rejecting a standard usage in order to demonstrate in-group membership.
Portrait emoticons - Second generation (1990s–present)
Nicolas Loufrani began to use the basic text designs and turned them into graphical representations, which are now known as portrait emoticons. His designs were registered at the United States Copyright Office in 1997 and appeared online as GIF files in 1998. For ASCII emoticons that did not exist to convert into graphical form, Loufrani also backward engineered new ASCII emoticons from the graphical versions he created. These were the first graphical representations of ASCII emoticons. Not only did these portrait emoticons portray existing and new ASCII emoticons, but also new features were added, such as hand gestures in the form of white gloves. These have since become standalone emojis along with other emojis that have replaced words in text communication. In 2001, he published his emoticon set online on the Smiley Dictionary. This dictionary included 640 different smiley icons and was published as a book called Dico Smileys in 2002. In 2017, British magazine The Drum referred to Loufrani as the "godfather of the emoji" for his work in the field.
The first American company to take notice of emojis was Google beginning in 2007. In August 2007, a team made up of Mark Davis and his colleagues Kat Momoi and Markus Scherer began petitioning the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) in an attempt to standardise the emoji. The UTC, having previously deemed emoji to be out of scope for Unicode, made the decision to broaden its scope to enable compatibility with the Japanese cellular carrier formats which were becoming more widespread. Peter Edberg and Yasuo Kida joined the collaborative effort from Apple Inc. shortly after, and their official UTC proposal came in January 2009 with 625 new emoji characters. Notably the move included a large set of emoticons, designed in an emoji-style but representing different emotions.
In recent times, emoticons, emojis and smileys have often become intertwined and confused. Emojis represent the largest set of graphical communication, but they often include portrait emoticons. In fact, the majority of the most commonly used Emoji are emoticons (because they represent an emotion). In 2024, the BBC reported that 2 of the top 3 emojis were portrait emoticons.
On September 23, 2021, it was announced that Scott Fahlman was holding an auction for the original emoticons he created in 1982. The auction was held in Dallas, United States, and sold the two designs as non-fungible tokens (NFT). The online auction ended later that month, with the originals selling for US$237,500. A year later in 2022, The Smiley Company auctioned off an NFT of 42 original graphical emoticon on World Emoji Day. The proceeds of the sale went to the company's non-profit arm, Smiley Movement.
In some programming languages, certain operators are known informally by their emoticon-like appearance. This includes the Spaceship operator <=> (a comparison), the Diamond operator <> (for type hinting) and the Elvis operator ?: (a shortened ternary operator).
Styles
Western
Usually, emoticons in Western style have the eyes on the left, followed by the nose and the mouth. It is commonly placed at the end of a sentence, replacing the full stop. The two-character version :), which omits the nose, is very popular. The most basic emoticons are relatively consistent in form, but some can be rotated (making them tiny ambigrams). There are also some variations to emoticons to get new definitions, like changing a character to express another feeling. For example, :( indicates sadness and :(( indicates a more extreme sadness. Weeping can be written as :'(. A blush can be expressed as :">. Others include wink ;), a grin :D, :P for tongue out, and smug :->; they can be used to denote a flirting or joking tone, or may be implying a second meaning in the sentence preceding it. ;P, such as when blowing a raspberry. An often used combination is also <3 for a heart and </3 for a broken heart. :O is also sometimes used to depict shock. :/ is used to depict melancholy, disappointment or disapproval. :| may be used to depict a neutral face.
A broad grin is sometimes shown with crinkled eyes to express further amusement; XD and the addition of further "D" letters can suggest laughter or extreme amusement, e.g., XDDDD. The "3" in X3 and :3 represents an animal's mouth. An equal sign is often used for the eyes in place of the colon, seen as =). It has become more acceptable to omit the hyphen, whether a colon or an equal sign is used for the eyes. One linguistic study has indicated that the use of a nose in an emoticon may be related to the user's age, with younger people less likely to use a nose.
Some variants are also more common in certain countries due to keyboard layouts. For example, the smiley =) may occur in Scandinavia. Diacritical marks are sometimes used. The letters Ö and Ü can be seen as emoticons, as the upright versions of :O (meaning that one is surprised) and :D (meaning that one is very happy), respectively. In countries where the Cyrillic alphabet is used, the right parenthesis ) is used as a smiley. Multiple parentheses )))) are used to express greater happiness, amusement or laughter. The colon is omitted due to being in a lesser-known position on the ЙЦУКЕН keyboard layout. The 'shrug' emoticon, ¯\(ツ)/¯, uses the glyph ツ from the Japanese katakana writing system.
Kaomoji (Japan ASCII movement)
Kaomoji are often seen as the Japanese development of emoticons that is separate to the Scott Fahlman movement, which started in 1982. In 1986, a designer began to use brackets and other ASCII text characters to form faces. Over time, they became more often differentiated from each other, although both use ASCII characters. However, more westernised Kaomojis have dropped the brackets, such as owo, uwu and TwT, popularised in internet subcultures such as the anime and furry communities.
A kaomoji painting in Japan
2channel
Users of the Japanese discussion board 2channel, in particular, have developed a variety emoticons using characters from various scripts, such as Kannada, as in ಠಠ (for a look of disapproval, disbelief or confusion). Similarly, the letter ರೃ was used in emoticons to represent a monocle and ಥ to represent a tearing eye. They were picked up by 4chan and spread to other Western sites soon after. Some have become characters in their own right like Monā.
Korean
In South Korea, emoticons use Korean Hangul letters, and the Western style is rarely used. The structures of Korean and Japanese emoticons are somewhat similar, but they have some differences. Korean style contains Korean jamo (letters) instead of other characters.
The consonant jamos ㅅ, ㅁ or ㅂ can be used as the mouth or nose component and ㅇ, ㅎ or ㅍ for the eyes. Using quotation marks " and apostrophes ' are also commonly used combinations. Vowel jamos such as ㅜ and ㅠ can depict a crying face. Example: ㅜㅜ, (same function as T in Western style). Sometimes ㅡ (not an em-dash "—", but a vowel jamo), a comma (,) or an underscore () is added, and the two character sets can be mixed together, as in ㅠ.ㅡ, ㅡ^ㅜ and ㅜㅇㅡ. Also, semicolons and carets are commonly used in Korean emoticons; semicolons can mean sweating, examples of it are -;/, --^ and --;;.
Chinese ideographic
The character 囧 (U+56E7), which means 'patterned window', may be combined with the posture emoticon Orz, such as 囧rz. The character existed in Oracle bone script but was rarely used until its use as an emoticon, documented as early as January 20, 2005.
Other variants of 囧 include 崮 (king 囧), 莔 (queen 囧), 商 (囧 with a hat), 囧興 (turtle) and 卣 (Bomberman). The character 槑 (U+69D1), a variant of 梅 'plum', is used to represent a double of 呆 'dull' or further magnitude of dullness. In Chinese, normally full characters (as opposed to the stylistic use of 槑) might be duplicated to express emphasis.
Posture emoticons
Orz
The emoticon Orz resembles a person performing a Japanese dogeza bow.
Orz (other forms include: Or2, on, OTZ, OTL, STO, JTO, no, 冂○ and 囧rz) is an emoticon representing a kneeling or bowing person (the Japanese version of which is called dogeza), with the "o" being the head, the "r" being the arms and part of the body, and the "z" being part of the body and the legs. This stick figure can represent respect or kowtowing, but commonly appears along a range of responses, including "frustration, despair, sarcasm, or grudging respect".
It was first used in late 2002 at the forum on Techside, a Japanese personal website. At the "Techside FAQ Forum" (TECHSIDE教えて君BBS(教えてBBS)), a poster asked about a cable cover, typing "| ̄|○" to show a cable and its cover. Others commented that it looked like a kneeling person, and the symbol became popular. These comments were soon deleted as they were considered off-topic. By 2005, Orz spawned a subculture: blogs have been devoted to the emoticon, and URL shortening services have been named after it. In Taiwan, Orz is associated with the concept of nice guys.
o7
o7, or O7, is an emoticon that depicts a person saluting, with the o being the head and the 7 being its arm.
Multimedia variations
Emoticon
A portmanteau of emotion and sound, an emotisound is a brief sound transmitted and played back during the viewing of a message, typically an IM message or email message. The sound is intended to communicate an emotional subtext. Some services, such as MuzIcons, combine emoticons and music players in an Adobe Flash-based widget. In 2004, the Trillian chat application introduced a feature called "emotiblips", which allows Trillian users to stream files to their instant message recipients "as the voice and video equivalent of an emoticon".
In 2007, MTV and Paramount Home Entertainment promoted the "emoticlip" as a form of viral marketing for the second season of the show The Hills. The emoticlips were twelve short snippets of dialogue from the show, uploaded to YouTube. The emoticlip concept is credited to the Bradley & Montgomery advertising firm, which wrote that they hoped it would be widely adopted as "greeting cards that just happen to be selling something".
Intellectual property rights
Emoticon
Patented drop down menu for composing phone mail text message with emoticons
In 2000, Despair, Inc. obtained a U.S. trademark registration for the "frowny" emoticon :-( when used on "greeting cards, posters and art prints". In 2001, they issued a satirical press release, announcing that they would sue Internet users who typed the frowny; the company received protests when its mock release was posted on technology news website Slashdot.
A number of patent applications have been filed on inventions that assist in communicating with emoticons. A few of these have been issued as US patents. US 6987991, for example, discloses a method developed in 2001 to send emoticons over a cell phone using a drop-down menu. The stated advantage was that it eases entering emoticons.
The emoticon :-) was also filed in 2006 and registered in 2008 as a European Community Trademark (CTM). In Finland, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled in 2012 that the emoticon cannot be trademarked, thus repealing a 2006 administrative decision trademarking the emoticons :-), =), =(, :) and :(. In 2005, a Russian court rejected a legal claim against Siemens by a man who claimed to hold a trademark on the ;-) emoticon. In 2008, Russian entrepreneur Oleg Teterin claimed to have been granted the trademark on the ;-) emoticon. A license would not "cost that much—tens of thousands of dollars" for companies but would be free of charge for individuals.
Unicode
Emoticon
A different, but related, use of the term "emoticon" is found in the Unicode Standard, referring to a subset of emoji that display facial expressions. The standard explains this usage with reference to existing systems, which provided functionality for substituting certain textual emoticons with images or emoji of the expressions in question.
Some smiley faces were present in Unicode since 1.1, including a white frowning face, a white smiling face and a black smiling face ("black" refers to a glyph which is filled, "white" refers to a glyph which is unfilled).
<table><thead><tr><th>Miscellaneous Symbols (partial) Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td> </td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td><td>6</td><td>7</td><td>8</td><td>9</td><td>A</td><td>B</td><td>C</td><td>D</td><td>E</td><td>F</td></tr><tr><td>U+260x</td><td>☀</td><td>☁</td><td>☂</td><td>☃</td><td>☄</td><td>★</td><td>☆</td><td>☇</td><td>☈</td><td>☉</td><td>☊</td><td>☋</td><td>☌</td><td>☍</td><td>☎</td><td>☏</td></tr><tr><td>U+261x</td><td>☐</td><td>☑</td><td>☒</td><td>☓</td><td>☔</td><td>☕</td><td>☖</td><td>☗</td><td>☘</td><td>☙</td><td>☚</td><td>☛</td><td>☜</td><td>☝</td><td>☞</td><td>☟</td></tr><tr><td>U+262x</td><td>☠</td><td>☡</td><td>☢</td><td>☣</td><td>☤</td><td>☥</td><td>☦</td><td>☧</td><td>☨</td><td>☩</td><td>☪</td><td>☫</td><td>☬</td><td>☭</td><td>☮</td><td>☯</td></tr><tr><td>U+263x</td><td>☰</td><td>☱</td><td>☲</td><td>☳</td><td>☴</td><td>☵</td><td>☶</td><td>☷</td><td>☸</td><td>☹</td><td>☺</td><td>☻</td><td>☼</td><td>☽</td><td>☾</td><td>☿</td></tr><tr><td>U+264x</td><td>♀</td><td>♁</td><td>♂</td><td>♃</td><td>♄</td><td>♅</td><td>♆</td><td>♇</td><td>♈</td><td>♉</td><td>♊</td><td>♋</td><td>♌</td><td>♍</td><td>♎</td><td>♏</td></tr><tr><td>U+265x</td><td>♐</td><td>♑</td><td>♒</td><td>♓</td><td>♔</td><td>♕</td><td>♖</td><td>♗</td><td>♘</td><td>♙</td><td>♚</td><td>♛</td><td>♜</td><td>♝</td><td>♞</td><td>♟</td></tr><tr><td>U+266x</td><td>♠</td><td>♡</td><td>♢</td><td>♣</td><td>♤</td><td>♥</td><td>♦</td><td>♧</td><td>♨</td><td>♩</td><td>♪</td><td>♫</td><td>♬</td><td>♭</td><td>♮</td><td>♯</td></tr><tr><td>U+267x</td><td>♰</td><td>♱</td><td>♲</td><td>♳</td><td>♴</td><td>♵</td><td>♶</td><td>♷</td><td>♸</td><td>♹</td><td>♺</td><td>♻</td><td>♼</td><td>♽</td><td>♾</td><td>♿</td></tr><tr><td>U+268x</td><td>⚀</td><td>⚁</td><td>⚂</td><td>⚃</td><td>⚄</td><td>⚅</td><td>⚆</td><td>⚇</td><td>⚈</td><td>⚉</td><td>⚊</td><td>⚋</td><td>⚌</td><td>⚍</td><td>⚎</td><td>⚏</td></tr><tr><td>U+269x</td><td>⚐</td><td>⚑</td><td>⚒</td><td>⚓</td><td>⚔</td><td>⚕</td><td>⚖</td><td>⚗</td><td>⚘</td><td>⚙</td><td>⚚</td><td>⚛</td><td>⚜</td><td>⚝</td><td>⚞</td><td>⚟</td></tr><tr><td>U+26Ax</td><td>⚠</td><td>⚡</td><td>⚢</td><td>⚣</td><td>⚤</td><td>⚥</td><td>⚦</td><td>⚧</td><td>⚨</td><td>⚩</td><td>⚪</td><td>⚫</td><td>⚬</td><td>⚭</td><td>⚮</td><td>⚯</td></tr><tr><td>U+26Bx</td><td>⚰</td><td>⚱</td><td>⚲</td><td>⚳</td><td>⚴</td><td>⚵</td><td>⚶</td><td>⚷</td><td>⚸</td><td>⚹</td><td>⚺</td><td>⚻</td><td>⚼</td><td>⚽</td><td>⚾</td><td>⚿</td></tr><tr><td>U+26Cx</td><td>⛀</td><td>⛁</td><td>⛂</td><td>⛃</td><td>⛄</td><td>⛅</td><td>⛆</td><td>⛇</td><td>⛈</td><td>⛉</td><td>⛊</td><td>⛋</td><td>⛌</td><td>⛍</td><td>⛎</td><td>⛏</td></tr><tr><td>U+26Dx</td><td>⛐</td><td>⛑</td><td>⛒</td><td>⛓</td><td>⛔</td><td>⛕</td><td>⛖</td><td>⛗</td><td>⛘</td><td>⛙</td><td>⛚</td><td>⛛</td><td>⛜</td><td>⛝</td><td>⛞</td><td>⛟</td></tr><tr><td>U+26Ex</td><td>⛠</td><td>⛡</td><td>⛢</td><td>⛣</td><td>⛤</td><td>⛥</td><td>⛦</td><td>⛧</td><td>⛨</td><td>⛩</td><td>⛪</td><td>⛫</td><td>⛬</td><td>⛭</td><td>⛮</td><td>⛯</td></tr><tr><td>U+26Fx</td><td>⛰</td><td>⛱</td><td>⛲</td><td>⛳</td><td>⛴</td><td>⛵</td><td>⛶</td><td>⛷</td><td>⛸</td><td>⛹</td><td>⛺</td><td>⛻</td><td>⛼</td><td>⛽</td><td>⛾</td><td>⛿</td></tr><tr><td>Notes</td></tr></tbody></table>
The Emoticons block was introduced in Unicode Standard version 6.0 (published in October 2010) and extended by 7.0. It covers Unicode range from U+1F600 to U+1F64F fully.
<table><thead><tr><th>Emoticons Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td> </td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td><td>6</td><td>7</td><td>8</td><td>9</td><td>A</td><td>B</td><td>C</td><td>D</td><td>E</td><td>F</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F60x</td><td>😀</td><td>😁</td><td>😂</td><td>😃</td><td>😄</td><td>😅</td><td>😆</td><td>😇</td><td>😈</td><td>😉</td><td>😊</td><td>😋</td><td>😌</td><td>😍</td><td>😎</td><td>😏</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F61x</td><td>😐</td><td>😑</td><td>😒</td><td>😓</td><td>😔</td><td>😕</td><td>😖</td><td>😗</td><td>😘</td><td>😙</td><td>😚</td><td>😛</td><td>😜</td><td>😝</td><td>😞</td><td>😟</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F62x</td><td>😠</td><td>😡</td><td>😢</td><td>😣</td><td>😤</td><td>😥</td><td>😦</td><td>😧</td><td>😨</td><td>😩</td><td>😪</td><td>😫</td><td>😬</td><td>😭</td><td>😮</td><td>😯</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F63x</td><td>😰</td><td>😱</td><td>😲</td><td>😳</td><td>😴</td><td>😵</td><td>😶</td><td>😷</td><td>😸</td><td>😹</td><td>😺</td><td>😻</td><td>😼</td><td>😽</td><td>😾</td><td>😿</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F64x</td><td>🙀</td><td>🙁</td><td>🙂</td><td>🙃</td><td>🙄</td><td>🙅</td><td>🙆</td><td>🙇</td><td>🙈</td><td>🙉</td><td>🙊</td><td>🙋</td><td>🙌</td><td>🙍</td><td>🙎</td><td>🙏</td></tr><tr><td>Notes</td></tr></tbody></table>
After that block had been filled, Unicode 8.0 (2015), 9.0 (2016) and 10.0 (2017) added additional emoticons in the range from U+1F910 to U+1F9FF. Currently, U+1F90C – U+1F90F, U+1F93F, U+1F94D – U+1F94F, U+1F96C – U+1F97F, U+1F998 – U+1F9CF (excluding U+1F9C0 which contains the 🧀 emoji) and U+1F9E7 – U+1F9FF do not contain any emoticons since Unicode 10.0.
<table><thead><tr><th>Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td> </td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td><td>6</td><td>7</td><td>8</td><td>9</td><td>A</td><td>B</td><td>C</td><td>D</td><td>E</td><td>F</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F90x</td><td>🤀</td><td>🤁</td><td>🤂</td><td>🤃</td><td>🤄</td><td>🤅</td><td>🤆</td><td>🤇</td><td>🤈</td><td>🤉</td><td>🤊</td><td>🤋</td><td>🤌</td><td>🤍</td><td>🤎</td><td>🤏</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F91x</td><td>🤐</td><td>🤑</td><td>🤒</td><td>🤓</td><td>🤔</td><td>🤕</td><td>🤖</td><td>🤗</td><td>🤘</td><td>🤙</td><td>🤚</td><td>🤛</td><td>🤜</td><td>🤝</td><td>🤞</td><td>🤟</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F92x</td><td>🤠</td><td>🤡</td><td>🤢</td><td>🤣</td><td>🤤</td><td>🤥</td><td>🤦</td><td>🤧</td><td>🤨</td><td>🤩</td><td>🤪</td><td>🤫</td><td>🤬</td><td>🤭</td><td>🤮</td><td>🤯</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F93x</td><td>🤰</td><td>🤱</td><td>🤲</td><td>🤳</td><td>🤴</td><td>🤵</td><td>🤶</td><td>🤷</td><td>🤸</td><td>🤹</td><td>🤺</td><td>🤻</td><td>🤼</td><td>🤽</td><td>🤾</td><td>🤿</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F94x</td><td>🥀</td><td>🥁</td><td>🥂</td><td>🥃</td><td>🥄</td><td>🥅</td><td>🥆</td><td>🥇</td><td>🥈</td><td>🥉</td><td>🥊</td><td>🥋</td><td>🥌</td><td>🥍</td><td>🥎</td><td>🥏</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F95x</td><td>🥐</td><td>🥑</td><td>🥒</td><td>🥓</td><td>🥔</td><td>🥕</td><td>🥖</td><td>🥗</td><td>🥘</td><td>🥙</td><td>🥚</td><td>🥛</td><td>🥜</td><td>🥝</td><td>🥞</td><td>🥟</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F96x</td><td>🥠</td><td>🥡</td><td>🥢</td><td>🥣</td><td>🥤</td><td>🥥</td><td>🥦</td><td>🥧</td><td>🥨</td><td>🥩</td><td>🥪</td><td>🥫</td><td>🥬</td><td>🥭</td><td>🥮</td><td>🥯</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F97x</td><td>🥰</td><td>🥱</td><td>🥲</td><td>🥳</td><td>🥴</td><td>🥵</td><td>🥶</td><td>🥷</td><td>🥸</td><td>🥹</td><td>🥺</td><td>🥻</td><td>🥼</td><td>🥽</td><td>🥾</td><td>🥿</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F98x</td><td>🦀</td><td>🦁</td><td>🦂</td><td>🦃</td><td>🦄</td><td>🦅</td><td>🦆</td><td>🦇</td><td>🦈</td><td>🦉</td><td>🦊</td><td>🦋</td><td>🦌</td><td>🦍</td><td>🦎</td><td>🦏</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F99x</td><td>🦐</td><td>🦑</td><td>🦒</td><td>🦓</td><td>🦔</td><td>🦕</td><td>🦖</td><td>🦗</td><td>🦘</td><td>🦙</td><td>🦚</td><td>🦛</td><td>🦜</td><td>🦝</td><td>🦞</td><td>🦟</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F9Ax</td><td>🦠</td><td>🦡</td><td>🦢</td><td>🦣</td><td>🦤</td><td>🦥</td><td>🦦</td><td>🦧</td><td>🦨</td><td>🦩</td><td>🦪</td><td>🦫</td><td>🦬</td><td>🦭</td><td>🦮</td><td>🦯</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F9Bx</td><td>🦰</td><td>🦱</td><td>🦲</td><td>🦳</td><td>🦴</td><td>🦵</td><td>🦶</td><td>🦷</td><td>🦸</td><td>🦹</td><td>🦺</td><td>🦻</td><td>🦼</td><td>🦽</td><td>🦾</td><td>🦿</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F9Cx</td><td>🧀</td><td>🧁</td><td>🧂</td><td>🧃</td><td>🧄</td><td>🧅</td><td>🧆</td><td>🧇</td><td>🧈</td><td>🧉</td><td>🧊</td><td>🧋</td><td>🧌</td><td>🧍</td><td>🧎</td><td>🧏</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F9Dx</td><td>🧐</td><td>🧑</td><td>🧒</td><td>🧓</td><td>🧔</td><td>🧕</td><td>🧖</td><td>🧗</td><td>🧘</td><td>🧙</td><td>🧚</td><td>🧛</td><td>🧜</td><td>🧝</td><td>🧞</td><td>🧟</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F9Ex</td><td>🧠</td><td>🧡</td><td>🧢</td><td>🧣</td><td>🧤</td><td>🧥</td><td>🧦</td><td>🧧</td><td>🧨</td><td>🧩</td><td>🧪</td><td>🧫</td><td>🧬</td><td>🧭</td><td>🧮</td><td>🧯</td></tr><tr><td>U+1F9Fx</td><td>🧰</td><td>🧱</td><td>🧲</td><td>🧳</td><td>🧴</td><td>🧵</td><td>🧶</td><td>🧷</td><td>🧸</td><td>🧹</td><td>🧺</td><td>🧻</td><td>🧼</td><td>🧽</td><td>🧾</td><td>🧿</td></tr><tr><td>Notes</td></tr></tbody></table>
For historic and compatibility reasons, some other heads and figures, which mostly represent different aspects like genders, activities, and professions instead of emotions, are also found in Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs (especially U+1F466 – U+1F487) and Transport and Map Symbols. Body parts, mostly hands, are also encoded in the Dingbat and Miscellaneous Symbols blocks.