Happy Birthday, Smiley!

Hi, Miss C.

I am guilty of not being a CAREFUL READER.

Yes - I see NOW that the emoticon is what was being discussed, not the yellow smiley face in a circle.

I promise to be more careful in the future. hehe

;-)

Adam, if you're thinking about the yellow face smiley pictured, yes, that's a lot older. This anniversary is for the typed emoticon smiley. The history of the internet emoticon is rather well documented.

You know who else has a birthday today? Samuel Johnson! Mister 'A Dictionary of the English Language' himself - it is indeed a doubly-momentous day for language and communication!

As to the smileys, it's interesting to think about how different online communication would be today without them. I wonder what shorthand might have popped up to indicate, "Please don't shoot me in the face, that was supposed to be a joke" if it weren't for smileys? Somehow "j/k" just isn't nearly as enjoyable ...

(I must take issue, though, with the "newer" smileys thrust upon us by IM progams - the first time I used a smiley in AIM 6.0 and all those giant transparent happy faces suddenly cascaded across my screen it startled the bejeezus out of me - simple and unsurprising is GOOD imo when it comes to smileys =P

Color me skeptical about this one.

I can't be the only person here who was a teen in the early 80s who can remember smilies being around prior to 1982.

Anyone?

And I was the first one to use the acronym l-o-l to express feelings of laughter over instant messages.