International Smile Day 2021

Happy international smile day! To mark this day, we would like to share with you a snippet from one of our newsletters in ’97 about the use of emoticons.

April 1997
EMOTICONS

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These are “emotion icons” and are used to convey feelings in such things as email and postings to newsgroups, just to name a few. The standard smiley : ) usually conveys happy bright feelings with
whatever was said. For instance, Australians seem to use insults to convey how much they like someone, but when used in email, especially if being read by someone who is feeling a bit niggley, “you old so and so” can be taken as a real insult. The addition of a smiley, “you old so and so. : – )” lets the reader know how the other person intended the email to read.

Then there are these <G> or *G* for a “grin” or sometimes even <grynne> and yet again, these <BG> <EG> <VEG> <VBG> representing big grin, evil grin, very evil grin, and a very big grin. I even know of someone who might qualify for <VBEG> – a very big evil grin.

Other emoticons are: : – D laughing, : – 7 wry, : – > sarcastic, : – P cheeky, ; – ) winking, : – o shocked. There are many variations, and experimentation can produce some pretty clever comments in themselves.

Annette

:) :-D :P