An emoticon (short for emotion icon, also known as emoting) is a graphical representation of facial expressions using characters — usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters — to express a person’s feelings, mood, or reaction as a method of expression. The early emojis were the forerunners of modern emojis that have evolved continuously, mainly on iOS and Android devices. The first ASCII emoticons, 🙂 and :-(, was written by Scott Fahlman in 1982, but emoticons originated in the PLATO IV computer system in 1972.

These colorful symbols are everywhere today, even as decorations in haute couture collections and very soon in films. Yes, emojis have left the digital realm and are firmly embedded in our time‘s widespread popular culture.

At the same time, these small smiling faces have changed the way we communicate.

In Western countries, emoticons are usually written at right angles to the direction of the text. Consumers in Japan promote a type of emoticon called kaomoji using the katakana character set that can be understood without tilting the head to the left. This style originated in Japanese ASCII NET in 1986.

As SMS and the Internet spread in the late 1990s, emoticons became more popular and were frequently used in text messages, Internet forums, and email. Emoticons have played an important role in technical communication, and some devices and applications provide stylized images that do not use punctuation. They offer a different range of “tone” and sensations through text messages that depict certain emotions through facial expressions during cybertext communication.

Download Smiley Emoticon PNG images transparent gallery.