The estimated reading time for this post is 3 minutes
If you’ve ever observed two people sitting side by side texting each other, you’ve probably realized that communication is increasingly through the written rather than the spoken word. Conveying your intentions through the written word has its limitations. You can’t use facial expressions, tone of voice or gestures to relay your intended meaning. Words alone must suffice unless you enlist the aid of emoticons.
Emoticons, literally emotions plus icons, aren’t new. They have been around since the 1800’s but the digital age has increased their use, if not their acceptance, as a suitable form of communication. Unlike chocolate, loved nearly universally, emoticons divide the world. Those who love emoticons pepper their writings with smiley faces aplenty while those who hate emoticons cringe every time they see punctuation enlisted to convey emotion.
Whether you love or hate emoticons, you need to be intimately familiar with them as their use is spreading far and wide. If you’re in the middle of a Facebook chat, instant messaging session or text conversation, you don’t want to by stumped trying to figure out what [nosmiley] :-bd [/nosmiley] means. (It means “thumbs up”, a good thing.)
What You Need to Know
1. You can use emoticons almost anywhere you have written digital conversations: email, Twitter, text messages, Facebook, Google+, instant messages, blog comments, Word documents, etc. (Here is a handy tutorial on how to insert emoticon images into Word documents).
2. Some sites translate emoticons into images, others don’t. If you are counting on a site to translate your very complex emoticon into an image, make sure that the recipient will be able to see the image. Facebook can be confusing because [nosmiley] 🙂 [/nosmiley] translates into a smiley face 🙂 in posts, but not in Facebook chat. (For how to make emoticons into images on Facebook chat, check out New Facebook Feature, Zupdates.)
3. Don’t rely upon emoticons translating between platforms. Email services, such as Yahoo, Gmail and others allow you to insert emoticons that convert to images when they are sent to people who use the same email service. But if you’re trying to insert an emoticon image from Gmail and send it to Yahoo mail, the receiver won’t see the image. Similarly, if you’re sending a text on an iPhone to an Android phone using an emoticon image, the Android user won’t see it.
Don’t rely solely on emoticons to deliver your message if they could be viewed on other sites. For example, if you try to use a wink to indicate you’re joking, that wink may disappear into cyberspace if you are using it in a text or email message.
4. Not everyone likes emoticons. If you send emails with emoticons to your boss or client who don’t use them back, these people may be sending you a message. Tone down or eliminate your use of emoticons with them to avoid looking unprofessional.
5. iPhones and Android phones have emoticon images available on their keyboards.
Emoticons became a standard feature on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch with the latest update to the operating system, iOS 5. You need to activate this feature with a few steps:
Settings => General => Keyboards => International Keyboards => Add New Keyboard => Emoji
After you have activated emoticons, you will see a globe button on your keyboard. Press the globe button for a list of available emoticon images.
Android phones come with the emoticon feature ready to go. Here’s the emoticon button on the Android SwiftKey X keyboard.
6. There are two different styles of emoticons, Western and Eastern. Eastern emoticons are read horizontally, while Western emoticons are read at a 90° angle. For example, the Western smiley emoticon is [nosmiley] :-)[/nosmiley] and the Japanese smiley emoticon is (^_^).
7. If you find yourself constantly stumped by emoticons, check out this handy List of Emoticons, showing symbols for Eastern and Western smileys.
8. To add an emoticon to your comments on this blog, click on the 🙂 next to the Comment Box.
If you find yourself wishing you could use emoticons when you drive, check out this handy emoticon sign you can use in your car from Think Geek: Drivemocion. (Note that this device is not legal in every state.)
[tip] For those wondering about the title, <3 = ♥ [/tip].
Do you enjoy using emoticons? Do you wish emoticons were outlawed? Let us know in the Comments section below!
* Smiley Wink image by Irish Typepad
* Emoticon magnets by Angela
Hi Carolyn,
I’m fairly old fashioned when it comes to emoticons. I use them a lot, but I only use 🙂 or 😉 that’s the ones I’m familiar with.
You made me feel old 🙂
Lol, Jens. Do you remember the first time emoticons were used in the 1800’s? 😉
Perhaps now is the time to reach out and discover the wide world of other emoticons to bring back the excitement of youth! 😀
I guess I just learned a new emoticon 😀
Excellent. I bet you feel younger already!
:)>-
Yes, I do. I just need to get myself a slice of pizza and a glass of coca-cola zero, and I’ll feel like a teenager again 🙂
I want to learn this! How did you do it? Why don’t I know anything? 🙁
I wasnt using much of the emoticons on my iPhone until recently when I installed the Emoji app. It is quite handy and lets you complete your sentence with a single smiley. Now, i am getting used to it so much that I have one for every msg i send out. 🙂
Hi Praveen, I used an emoticon app on my iPhone before iOS 5, but it was such a pain to install, I wouldn’t have recommended it. The iOS 5 emoticon feature is much better, because it’s easier to install and give a lot more choices of emoticons.
My only wish is that Apple made it available without having to go through those steps. 😕
Yea right…the emoticons should hv been pre-installed for the messaging app tool by default. Apple seems to be lagging behind on this one [-(
I agree, Praveen. Siri isn’t automatically enabled either. I have had many readers tell me that they don’t have Siri on their iPhone 5’s. iPhones are supposed to be easy and user -friendly.
Hi Carolyn,
I used to hate them but now I use them in my blogs. I can’t remember all of them. The students I talk to use them a lot. The one that signifies crying is a popular one! I just read that the average family in the UK save 10% of their income, it’s double in Germany at around 20% but in China it’s 47%! I shall include that information in this week’s frugal blog!
I missed writing a blog today, but tomorrow’s is about snow photography. I was half way writing about the properties of snow today when I decided to give up and take the day off! 🙂
Hi Mike, I’ve been seeing a lot of pictures of snow in Europe on my Facebook stream. I can’t wait to see yours tomorrow. 🙂
I’m thinking the US savings rate is quite low, unfortunately.
Oh how I wish emoticons were outlawed! I am just used to them 🙂 and to exclamation marks also!! 😉
You know when in college we actually had a debate on whether people are becoming less expressive in words and more in emoticons! 🙂 Well, quite a lot. I mean when we chat we use so many of 😉 and 🙂 and 😀 but how many times do we actually wink while having an actual conversation! People will actually brand you as a pervert! 😀
Well, please we need to do something about the addiction! 😉
Lol, Hajra. I know you’re not alone in wishing emoticons would go away. I like them because it means I haven’t mis-read the emotion, but sometimes they get complicated. I do wish there were a standard that turned emoticons into images across all the platforms so that we wouldn’t have to guess what some of the complex emoticons mean. @-)
:D/ Wow! I found the emotions on this box! 🙂
I had been wondering how you managed to get them in your post and even here, how do you get them above this comment box 🙂
I love using emotions also but somehow I am still learning how to fix the problem on my blog, it doesn’t really come through as well between the post sentences, but shows at the end of the sentence. Wonder what could be wrong? :-??
;;) Thanks so much for sharing this wonderful post 🙂
Hi Harleena, I use a plugin calls WP Smileys that uses the smiley code from Yahoo. I really like the plugin but it wasn’t compatible with my old theme. I switched themes to this one so smileys could work.
I don’t know why you are having the problem on your blog but try the WP Smileys plugin. I hope it works with your theme! 🙂
Hi Carolyn,
I kind of resisted using emoticons for a while – but now I do it more often. 🙂 see what I mean.
I think they can be very useful to make sure that your message recipient realises when you are being, or at least attempting to be, funny and not to be taken too seriously. They can help to avoid misunderstandings online – so I think they are as valid a way of communicating as the written word in some instances.
Hi Hamish, You’re right, emoticons are much more widely accepted now. They’re a useful way of conveying your emotions in written text. I just worry that people might rely on emoticons exclusively to show their intentions and then the emoticon doesn’t translate between email services or phones.
Good demo showing your use of emoticons, Hamish! 😀
Carolyn,
I had no idea there were Western and eastern moties. I thought people were just creative. Oh My.
I used to use them all the tome but got away from it for some reason except for 🙂 on Facebook comments. I’m not sure I want to start memorizing a whole new set of symbols. Picture ones I need!
You know I will check out your links though, you always make it easy, Thank you for that.
Ann Jane 🙂
Hi Jane, I have to admit, I didn’t know the different style of emoticons were Eastern until I researched this article!
I agree, I don’t like having to remember all of the different symbols. It’s much easier to have a them available on this blog, in emails or on my phone.
Thanks for stopping by, Ann Jane!
All I have to say is 😀
Brilliant! =D>
This is GREAT Carolyn! :-bd I do use emoticons on my iPhone and when I am Facebook chatting, with my kids particularly. And they slip into my blog posts once in a while.
Next I want you to do a blog explaining all of those Twitter and texting abbreviations (TTYL, LOL, etc.). So many of those stump me!
Hi Ruth, I’m so glad you found this post helpful! Emoticons can be confusing, but they’re fun when you know more about them.
Actually, I’m way ahead of you, Ruth, Check out LOL, OMG, BRB: Speaking the Language of Texts https://wonderoftech.com/lol-omg-brb-speaking-the-language-of-texts/, a post I wrote in May of last year. You’ll see you’re definitely not alone! 🙂
You know, AS I wrote the comment, I thought to myself – I bet she’s already written about that topic! Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!
Always happy to help. 😀
As you know Carolyn, I LOVE the smiley face! Just part of my personality but I admit that when people leave me “chat” abbreviations at times I have no clue what they mean. I remember for the longest time I didn’t know what lol meant. Stop laughing.
I don’t have texting and I guess with my age I’m use to just typing out my words. I very seldom abbreviate words, just a few. Thanks for that list of emoticons. Dee Ann shared one with me some time back so I found that a life saver.
Fun post! Loved it! 🙂
Hi Adrienne, I can definitely see you enjoying emoticons. Expressing yourself with a big smile seems like a good fit!
You can use emoticons not just for texting, but in Facebook messages, emails, tweets, chats and on blog comments. I like my WP Smileys plugin because it has the best choices of emoticons of any of the plugins (in my humble opinion!).
Good point, I suppose a [nosmiley] 🙂 [/nosmiley] is more universally understood than lol. :-j
Wow! That’s so cool! I am not an emoji-user, more because I just didn’t know how to access them than because I didn’t like them. So of course, with your wonderful details, I just added the Emoji keyboard to my iPhone. Watch out world, I have arrived … and with Emoji’s to express myself! :-bd :)) <):)
So, I’m thinking you’re an emoticon fan, Carol? :-bd
Yes, I would have made the emoticon feature automatically enabled on the iPhone, but the folks at Apple didn’t consult with me first. 😕
Have fun with your emoticons!
Carolyn, aloha. Though I don’t think emoticons should be outlawed, I do think people should be much more discriminating in their use of them. When an e-mail or comment is peppered with emoticons, I don’t want to read it.
Other than an occasional smiley face or clapping hands, in most instances I think they both distract and detract from the message.
Like Adrienne, I am used to typing out the words so just do it. Oftentimes when people use their “codes,” I am clueless as to what they mean and guess at the message.
Interesting comments you are receiving on this topic, Carolyn. Well done.
Best wishes for a magnificent week. Aloha. Janet
Hi Janet, thank you. My ultimate emoticon wish would be that there were one code that translated emoticons into images so there would be no confusion. So many messages can be misinterpreted that it’s important to understand emoticons.
But I agree with you, when they’re used too frequently, they overshadow the message trying to be delivered. Maybe there should be an emoticon limit?
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts! 🙂
Interesting, there are times I still have to Google what they mean; I’m afraid to ask so I just go find out somewhere else. I don’t want anybody to think I’m not hip w/ emoticons……..:).
I guess I will have to activate them on my phone if I want to become the master, huh?
Thanks for this tidy bit of info that will be very useful indeed.
Bill, wait until you see how many emoticons are at your disposal on the iPhone. Prepare your family that your text messages are going to be very decorative from now on! 🙂
Bill,
You need an 11 yo old like mine to translate. It’s ok if I look geeky, I do no matter what I do. LOL.
~Allie
So true, Allie. If we worry about looking geeky in front of our kids, we would never do anything (and we’d still look geeky)! 😉
Hi Carolyn,
Awesome article on Emoticons. They are essential part of my online conversation. Though I use mostly :), 😉 and :(, I often look for others when I feel they can convey the emotions that I am experiencing. I like B-).
Also I was not aware of horizontal and vertical emoticons. I often wondered how ^-^ is different from :).
Thanks for all this info, Carolyn, my knowledge about emoticons has definitely increased .
Hey Ashivin and Carolyn and others .
Did you try this too
1. [[171108522930776]]
2. [[164413893600463]]
3. [[218595638164996]]
4. [[189637151067601]]
5. [[129627277060203]]
6. [[227644903931785]]
7. [[100002752520227]]
8. [[105387672833401]]
9. [[100002727365206]]
10. [[224812970902314]]
Awesome things you guys must try this too 🙂
Those are very cool, Suresh! I will definitely be trying those with my friends. (I often wonder who discovers these tricks and how!)
I found over web and one of the profile emoticons tricks found at Techcrunch website .We just need hunt hunt hunt keep on hunting for new awesome and crazy stuff.
Hi Suresh, Yes, my link in the post was to an article that had those codes, but it’s very helpful you shared them here in comments.
What I wonder is who figures out these codes in the first place? They seem so random that I wonder how they are discovered.
Thanks again for sharing them. They are very cool! 🙂
Hi Ashvini, I’m delighted that this article was helpful to you. I believe we might have had a conversation about my emoticon app not working on my last theme. I’m much happier with a functional emoticon app. 🙂
You definitely should use the B-) emoticon more often. Are those Porsche sunglasses your emoticon is wearing? 😀
LOL Carolyn, You remembered that post 🙂 . I think I will settle for Rayban as Porsche glasses cost $430 which is a big amount to pay. May if I fly a fighter plane I might use one 🙂 Hehe!!
Hi Ashvini, I will always remember your brilliant post about line extensions. 🙂
I hope you are able to visit the US sometime, Ashvini. The amount you would save on buying Porsche sunglasses here would pay for the trip.
Hi Carolyn,
I have been only once to US ( Idaho) . I loved that trip. I don’t know , maybe one day I get a chance to meet you as well. That would be cool 🙂
Hi Ashvini, When I lived in England, I met quite a few people who had been to only one place in the US. Always it was New York, Florida or California. Never did I meet anyone whose only state they visited was Idaho. Very impressive.
I hope some day I am fortunate enough to visit India. That would be great. Perhaps our paths will cross someday, Ashvini! 🙂
Here is my awesome and innovative comments 😉 Bored of same old Emoticons ?? then you can use your pic too in chat message .
Wanna try it ?
Then type [[your facebook user name]] and enter 🙂
exampe: my facebook username is sureshkumarpeters
so i type [[sureshkumarpeters]] then i can see my image over there in emoticons 😉
Trying New will be awesome always.. Thanks for the great post too .
Suresh
CEO of Sofwarebuzzer.com
Hey Suresh, very cool trick! Thanks so much for sharing these Facebook chat tricks with us. Our friends will be very impressed! 🙂
Suresh,
From being a SEO guru now to emoticons guru 🙂 . Nice info bro 🙂
I use emoticons quite a lot but I do sometimes send them to my boss which is totally unprofessional I think. I then stopped using them for a while but missed them!
I just use them mainly on twitter now 🙂
Hi Sarah, I can understand why you have used emoticons at work. We get so accustomed to using them in our daily lives that it seems natural to use them at work too. You can take your cues from your boss. If he or she uses them, then you can too. But if you’re the only person using emoticons at work, you should probably stop using them there.
I always use emoticons when I’m chatting to friends, but keep professional when working on or promoting my blog 🙂 Also, I like your floating sharebuttons! Did you code them yourself, or is an app like addthis?
Hi Chris, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Very smart to keep your writing professional and refrain from using emoticons. I don’t use emoticons in the body of my articles (unless I’m writing about emoticons) because I want my words to convey my message.
I’m glad you like the floating buttons on the side of my blog. The plugin is called Cute Profiles. I find they work well.
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment, Chris!
I have a question please. I can’t figure out how gmail emoticons work across all platforms. If I send an email with emoticons, I can see on my Windows computer, my iPhone and my son can see on his Android. I have tried numerous apps on the iPhone but they only work iPhone to iPhone. In order to use, how do you know when someone will be able to see the emoticon as you intend? Why can’t they just make them universal??
Hi Emma, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I agree, emoticons should be universal but, as I state in the article, they aren’t. Make sure you don’t depend solely on emoticons to convey your message, otherwise your meaning could definitely be lost in translation!
Carolyn,
Many days I am not an emoticon person because I never know what most of them mean. I have to go ask my 11 yo daughter what they mean. LOL.
But what is really cool is I have Siri on my iPhone and when I text I can tell her “smiley face” and she puts the emoticon. I thought that was cool!
~Allie
Hi Allie, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! You’re right, emoticons can be confusing and not everyone has an 11 year old to interpret them! It’s best not to get too elaborate with emoticons if they’re not going to be turned into images so you don’t risk confusing people.
That’s a very cool Siri trick. I am constantly amazed at how smart Siri is!
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your Siri tip with us, Allie! 🙂
I am a definite emoticon user because I find that words aren’t enough to express my cheeriness and energy. They also help me establish when I’m joking or not.
I’m really interested in your point about emoticons in professional correspondence! My last boss loved using emoticons and she was a warm, cheerful person too. But I can definitely see how emoticons can seem unprofessional to others. Gotta be careful! =)
Hi Samantha, I agree in a work environment you should take your cues from others. If your boss loves emoticons then there is nothing wrong in using them when you write to her. But you don’t want to be a lone wolf using them at work.
I agree with you, I’m a fan of emoticons. When I see a smiley face, it’s as if someone is smiling at me and I can’t help but smile back. 🙂
Emoticons confuse me! I know the basic happy, sad, wink and poking tongue out but that’s about it. My girlfriend sent me a rose emoticon on valentines day, kinda ruined the moment when I had to send a txt back asking what it was! Made up for it later by turning up with a real rose for her though 🙂
Hi Mike, I agree, emoticons can be confusing. That’s why I really like the smiley plugin I use, it turns emoticons into images. No confusing this: @};-
But you did a great job in making it up to your girlfriend. I’m sure all was forgiven! :-bd
hello 🙂 , your article was very interesting.
I think emoticon can help me to describe my expression..
and usually I send a message by use 🙂 to keep the conversation be fun and happy.
although my heart was hurt, but sometimes I still use 🙂
Hi Gadget Talk, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I’m glad you found this article interesting. You’re right, emoticons can keep the conversation fun and happy. They’re an effective way to convey your emotions when you’re writing instead of speaking.
Thanks for stopping by and adding to the conversation, Gadget Talk! I hope you come back and visit The Wonder of Tech again soon! 🙂