A Hundred and More Emoticons
The list of emoticons available over the worldwide web could run on to a hundred pages. Free emoticons come in the traditional western or eastern styles or in the latest graphic style.
Expressing emotions through using icons or emoticons became a popular method during the turn of the century. It was a time when mobile phones began a rapid climb in technological features and in sales. The list of emoticons expanded along with technological advancements. The smiley or the happy face became the most popular of the western style emoticons. It can be formed by using a colon for the eyes, a dash for the nose, and a closing parenthesis. A shortcut version is formed by simply using the colon and the closing parenthesis. On the other hand, a sad face or even a skeptical face can be expressed through using a colon followed by the upper case of the letter I. A wink is formed through a semicolon, while sealed lips through the upper case of the letter X.
The list of emoticons is richer for traditional eastern styles. The smiley is formed through an open parenthesis, a caret or the spacing symbol ^, a dot or period, another caret, and a closing parenthesis. A dash replaces the carets to form a sad or upset face, while a dot-underscore-dot combination in between parentheses indicates bitterness or extreme sadness. Anger can be expressed through a greater than symbol, a dot, and a less than symbol between two parentheses.
The Japanese were able to incorporate Nihongo characters into their own emoticons. Encoding the language used in the land of the rising sun is done in double-byte character codes. Most of these codes were used to reproduced ASCII art.
Free emoticons have developed further into moving images. Graphical emoticons, as these are commonly called, do not exactly represent emotions or faces. A cake, for example, may be used as a greeting to someone who is supposedly celebrating an event. Likewise, the symbol for the United States dollar could be used to represent money or need for money. Graphic emoticons were even taken a step further through instant messaging (IM) applications. Emoticons used for IM could now move and play a sound. These free animated emoticons were also made compatible for emails.
The birth of the emotisound or emoticons with sound marked the crossover from the visual to the audiovisual realm in text-based electronic communications. Multimedia variations such as the emoticlips and funicons followed suit as social networking websites increased in membership. Emoticlips were mainly created and distributed as a marketing tool. Funicons, however, were made for free public use. These icons have successfully replaced the stickers which gained popularity during the 1980s and 1990s.
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