{"id":11340,"date":"2007-09-18T06:42:35","date_gmt":"2007-09-18T13:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2007\/09\/18\/smiles-everyone-smiles.html"},"modified":"2007-09-18T06:42:35","modified_gmt":"2007-09-18T13:42:35","slug":"smiles_everyone_smiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/09\/18\/smiles_everyone_smiles.html","title":{"rendered":"“Smiles, everyone! Smiles!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s the 25th anniversary of the smile emoticon<\/a>.  \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\n

Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes \u2014 a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis \u2014 as a horizontal “smiley face” in a computer message.<\/p>\n

[…] Fahlman posted the emoticon in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1982, during a discussion about the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly.  “I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-),” wrote Fahlman. “Read it sideways.”<\/p>\n

The suggestion gave computer users a way to convey humor or positive feelings with a smile \u2014 or the opposite sentiments by reversing the parenthesis to form a frown.<\/p>\n

Carnegie Mellon said Fahlman’s smileys spread from its campus to other universities, then businesses and eventually around the world as the Internet gained popularity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’ve participated in endless online debates over whether emoticons are useful, essential elements of online communication, or if they are an abomination in the eyes of God (and Strunk & White).  Opponents note that written communication got along fine for centuries without emoticons, through careful word choice.  Proponents note that overall volume of written communication has gone up through e-mail and texting, while time available to do it has gone down.<\/p>\n

I use them, in casual communication.  I don’t in more formal communication, nor in actual “writing.”<\/p>\n

\n

Emoticons reflect the likely original purpose of language \u2014 to enable people to express emotion, said Clifford Nass, a professor of communications at Stanford University. The emotion behind a written sentence may be hard to discern because emotion is often conveyed through tone of voice, he said.<\/p>\n

“What emoticons do is essentially provide a mechanism to transmit emotion when you don’t have the voice,” Nass said.<\/p>\n

In some ways, he added, they also give people “the ability not to think as hard about the words they’re using.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To my mind, a bigger issue with emoticons are the ambiguity of some forms.  Everyone has a decent idea of what \ud83d\ude42 and \ud83d\ude41 are (we’ll leave aside the profound question of whether a hyphen is a necessary nose marker or not).  But once you get into other areas, it gets dicier — especially since ISO hasn’t weighed in on official meanings.  Biggest question mark in my mind is:  is \ud83d\ude1b a sign of queasy “bleah” unhappiness over a situation, or looney tongue-sticking-out fun?  I’ve seen it used both ways, and the interpretation into more graphic icons in programs like Yahoo Instant Messenger doesn’t clarify it any.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s the 25th anniversary of the smile emoticon.  \ud83d\ude42 Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes \u2014 a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-and-language"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2844,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/09\/13\/and_now_you_kno.html","url_meta":{"origin":11340,"position":0},"title":"And now you know :-)","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 13-Sep-02 8:54am","format":false,"excerpt":"Researchers have tracked down the first use of a \"smiley\" emoticon. 19 September 1982. The inventor (or culprit, if you prefer) was one Scott E. Fahlman at Carnegie Mellon. Mark...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8724,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/08\/29\/sticking_tongue.html","url_meta":{"origin":11340,"position":1},"title":"Sticking tongue out","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 29-Aug-05 10:12am","format":false,"excerpt":"The emoticon ... :-P ... represents \"sticking out tongue,\" \"tongue sticking out,\" \"tongue hanging out in anticipation,\" \"Kitty with tongue hanging out,\" \"tongue sticking out: joke or sarcasm\" (Strictly speaking,...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27859,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/10\/good-touches.html","url_meta":{"origin":11340,"position":2},"title":"Good touches","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 10-May-12 9:38pm","format":false,"excerpt":"This is pretty remarkable stuff. Watch the attached video. Embedded Link The Future Is Now: Anything Can Be A Touch Screen Thanks To Disney Research Any surface, including liquid and the human body, can be turned into a multi touch interface with a new technology developed by researchers at Disney\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6638,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/08\/10\/i_second_that_e.html","url_meta":{"origin":11340,"position":3},"title":"I second that emoticon","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 10-Aug-04 4:10pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Most Instant Messaging systems -- and some e-mail clients (e.g., Thunderbird) automatically replace emoticon text, for example, smilies -- :-) -- with graphical images to \"look better.\" Problem is, sometimes...","rel":"","context":"In "My Computer"","block_context":{"text":"My Computer","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/my-computer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5425,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/03\/14\/no_need_to_worr.html","url_meta":{"origin":11340,"position":4},"title":"No need to worry about Terminators … yet","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 14-Mar-04 10:55am","format":false,"excerpt":"The DARPA Grand Challenge -- sending 15 privately-designed and built robots off-road on a course from Barstow to Vegas -- has ended with all vehicles disabled early on in the...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132801,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/08\/if-you-dont-already-realize-its-dangerous-will-an-app-help.html","url_meta":{"origin":11340,"position":5},"title":"If you don't already realize it's dangerous, will an app help?","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 8-Feb-17 8:26am","format":false,"excerpt":"Some very clever people are trying to develop an app to warn people if they are being really stupid when they take a selfie. Like \"standing on the edge of a cliff\" stupid.Unfortunately, I'm unconvinced that they will get enough true positives to help people actually be safer, esp. since\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}