There is hardly a medium since the beginning of man that has had such an impact on human communication as the Internet. Any communication system available today offline is replicated online, at least to some extent. You can write, chat and even talk all online.
But there’s nothing like a physical expression of emotions. It just couldn’t be represented in writing. But that was until a while ago. Internet junkies decided to com up with a way of representing their emotions and facial expressions with “emotional icons” or simply “emoticons”. However, these emoticons or “smileys”, as they are alternatively called are used only for informal communications like during casual chatting, friendly emails, etc.
Emoticons or smileys are represented as a sequence of printable characters, which converts into a small image depicting a particular facial expression or other informal gestures like a cup of tea, flowers or even national flags. They are the Internet’s shorthand system, in a way.
So, instead of just writing “hey, how are you doing?” which is dry and expresses no emotions, something like “hey, how are you doing : ) ” delivers some warmth, indicating a smile.
Emoticons are mostly used in chat rooms, online discussion boards and informal emails between friends, co-workers, family members and people in an informal relationship. There are used to convey love, warmth, jokes and whatever emotions we cherish and share physically.
Emotional icons are continually evolving with more and more being added to the list every year. Nowadays, there are even sites online which specialize only in developing and promoting these emotional icons. If you do a search for “emoticon sites” you may find quite a handful of this type of sites.
If you have a plan of being in chat rooms or engaging in discussions in any of the forums online, you may want to study a little about emoticons to help spice up your discussions.