emoticon

An emoticon is a textual representation of a facial expression used to convey emotion in written communication. It is formed from ASCII or extended characters and is read as a pictorial face from punctuation marks arranged in a compact pattern. The simplest examples are horizontal emoticons such as :-) or :-(, which resemble smiles or frowns when viewed sideways. Other common forms include winks ;-), surprised faces :-O, and tongue-out ;-P. In addition to Western ASCII styles, there is a family of Japanese-style emoticons known as kaomoji that use a wider range of characters and are often vertical, for example (＾▽＾), (╯︵╰,), or ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

History and terminology: The concept originated in online communities in the 1980s, with Scott Fahlman often cited for proposing the use of :-) to mark jokes on Usenet in 1982. Emoticons were popular because plain text could carry tone even when images were unavailable. With the growth of Unicode and modern keyboards, users gained access to a broader character set, leading to more complex kaomoji and other expressions.

Usage and distinction: Emoticons are distinct from emoji, which are fixed pictographic symbols encoded in Unicode and rendered as graphics by platforms. Emoticons are still used to convey tone, humor, sarcasm, or irony, while emoji provide standardized pictograms. See also: emoji, kaomoji, ASCII art.