Emoticons Spice Up Web Communication

Emoticons are those cute little smiley faces and other characters that are commonly used within e-mails, instant messages, forums, message boards, blogs and even SMS text messages.  The best-known emoticon is the humble smiley, which has now been around for over 25 years.  Hard to believe!

Emoticons are not just cute and friendly little characters to add some style to your online writing; they are also a necessity in order to accurately convey the meaning of your text. 

Back in the early days of the Internet a problem was discovered.  When sending an e-mail, many times the intended message was misinterpreted because the receiver of the e-mail did not have any way of knowing the emotion behind the words.

For example, when someone was being sarcastic or ironic in an e-mail message, it was very difficult to determine exactly the what they meant.  This produced a lot of confusion, and even some hard feelings before the invention of Smilies and other emoticons.

Technically, and emoticon is an "emotional icon," and their purpose is to convey the feeling behind the words, so that the reader of an e-mail message or blog post, for example, can understand the state of mind of the writer, not just the words they have written. 

As online communication has advanced and progressed, so have emoticons become more complex. Although the smiley face was the first widely used in emoticon, there are now actually dozens, if not hundreds of other characters that are commonly used to spice up Web communication, and convey the feeling behind the words.

Another advancement is the recent invention of 3-D emoticons.  These helpful little characters are much more life-like, and can walk, talk, whistle, sing, wink, smile, cry, frown, dance, laugh and even run.

So why is it that these chubby little icons have become so popular online?  One theory is that emoticons can say a whole lot in a very small amount of space.  For example, rather than taking the time to type out "I am not happy about what you just said," the user can opt to simply add a frowning emoticon.  The message will be clearly understood.

Another reason that emoticons are so popular these days is their fun "cartoon like" appearance.  Just looking at some of the newest 3-D emoticons is enough to make you laugh or at least smile.  They catch your eye and lighten the mood.

Finally, emoticons are wildly popular for the simple reason that they are so incredibly easy to use.  You don't need to be a computer geek or a tech worker to understand how to use emotional icons.  Even people who barely know how to send an e-mail can intuitively understand the meaning of emoticons and how and where to use them within their messages.

Technology has also advanced to the point where you don't even need to remember keystrokes to create emoticons.  Most message boards and instant messenger services have a wide range of emoticons you can add to your message with a single click.  It doesn't really get much the easier than that.

Emoticons spice up our online communication and make online messaging fun -- and at the end of the day, that's why we all love them.