for "grin" or ... to mark appropriate sections) and BBSs that use BBCode have their own alternative markup for inserting graphic emoticons (:sad: :shocked: etc.) which can also be read as text markup on non-graphical browsers such as Lynx.
Emoticons developed as a form of paralanguage used as extended interpunction symbols in e-mail, instant messaging, online chat, bulletin board systems, and Internet forums where communication is rapid, and the lack of context in purely textual communications could lead to even simple statements being easily misinterpreted.
Often a smile is represented with a basic smiley :-). The colon represents the eyes, the hyphen is for the nose, and the parenthesis for the mouth. Many variants exist with different symbols substituted for the basic ones. The symbol for the nose is often omitted, for example :) or ;). When the colon is replaced with the equals sign, =), the nose is almost always omitted (so one would not see =-), for example). There are also other smilies such as X ) and 8 ) This is also used to make figures, objects and animals.
Etymology
The word "emoticon" is, according to popular etymology, a blend of "emotion" and "icon". A similar word, "verticon" (from "vertical" and "icon"), is sometimes used when referring to the East Asian style of emoticon (i.e., the symbols represent a face that is vertically, rather than horizontally oriented).
In Web forums and instant messengers, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which came to be called emoticons as well.
The 'original' smiley
In 1963, the "smiley face", a yellow button with two black dots representing eyes and an upturned thick curve representing mouth, was created by freelance artist Harvey Ball. It was realized on order of a large insurance company as part of a campaign to bolster the morale of its employees and soon became a big hit. This smiley presumably inspired many later emoticons; the most basic graphic emoticon depicts in fact a small, yellow, smiley face.
However, Franklin Loufrani of London-based company SmileyWorld says he came up with the image in 1971 for a newspaper promotion in which he displayed his icon to highlight good news. He then started developing products using this logo as a brand.
The graphic was popularized in the early 1970s by a pair of brothers, Murray and Bernard Spain, who seized upon it in a campaign to sell novelty items. The two produced buttons as well as coffee mugs, t-shirts, bumper stickers and many other items emblazoned with the symbol and the phrase "Have a happy day" (devised by Murray Spain).
The film Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994) comically featured the smiley being "invented" when the main character wipes his mud-covered face off with a yellow t-shirt, and says "Have a nice day", inspiring a struggling businessman with the makeshift design. This scene is not in the original book.
The smiley was one of the many icons adopted by the acid house dance music culture that emerged in the late 1980s, as engraving famous logos on ecstasy tablets was a common practice at the time.
The two original text smileys, :-) to indicate a joke and :-( to mark things that are not a joke were invented on September 19, 1982 by Scott E. Fahlman, a research professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Computer Science. His original post at the CMU CS general board, where he suggested the use of the smileys, was retrieved on September 10, 2002 by Jeff Baird from an October 1982 backup tape of the spice vax (cmu-750x) as proof to support the claim.
Links
BBS post where the smiley was proposed - 1982 - Archived here.
The man behind the smiley - bitwisegifts.com.
The inventor of the sideways smiley - cs.cmu.edu.
