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An emoticon, also called a smiley, is a sequence of printable characters such as :), ^-^/, or :-) or a small image that is intended to represent a human facial expression and convey an emotion. Emoticons are a form of paralanguage commonly used in email messages, in online bulletin boards, or in chat rooms. The word emoticon is a portmanteau based on emotion and icon.

A similar portmanteau, verticon (based on vertical and icon), is sometimes used when referring to the East Asian style of emoticon.

[edit] Western style

Traditionally, the emoticon in Western style is written from left to right, the way one reads and writes in most Western cultures. Thus, most commonly, you'll see the eyes on the left, followed by the nose and mouth. To more easily recognise them, tilt your head towards your left shoulder (or occasionally towards your right shoulder if the "top" of the emoticon is towards the right).

The smile is represented with a basic smiley :-). The colon represents the eyes, the hyphen is for the nose, and the parenthesis is 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).

[edit] Basic examples

The following examples all use the basic form, but each of them can be transformed to be rotated, to lose the dash and/or to replace the eyes symbol. Lately it has become common to omit the dash.

 :-)                smile
 :-(                frown: sadness or sympathy
 :-/                somewhat unhappy/discontent or undecided
 :-|                confused or unsure what to say
 ;-)                wink
 :-D                wide grin
 :-P or :-p         tongue sticking out: joke or sarcasm
 B-) or 8-)         has sunglasses: looking cool
 :-o or :-O         expresses surprise
 :-x                "I shouldn't have said that"
 :'-(               shedding a tear of beauty / sadness
 :o) or :o(         larger nose, usually means tongue-in-cheek
 >:-) or }:-)       lowered eyebrow's, evil or mean, a devil
 0:-)               halo over the head, good or benevolent, an angel, innocent

[edit] East Asian style

Users from East Asia popularized a style of emoticons known as verticons, which can be understood without turning one's head to the left. These styles of faces roughly resemble the style commonly found in Japanese anime cartoons.

These are usually in the format of *_*, where the asterisks indicate the eyes, and the central character, usually an underscore, is the mouth. When a period is used for the mouth, it is often meant to make the person look cuter, especially for women. Alternatively, the mouth can be left out entirely. A single ', or double " quote can be appended to the emoticon to imply apprehension, or embarassment, ala the anime sweatdrop.

The Japanese language is usually encoded using double-byte character codes. As a result there is a bigger variety of characters that can be used in emoticons, many of which cannot be reproduced in ASCII. It is noted historically, that the Japanese style used the parenthesis as the face, for example: (^_^). Complete shorthand in Japanese style would be akin to: ^^.

[edit] Basic examples

Note that for most of these, it is possible to use a period for a mouth (^.^) or leave out the mouth entirely (^^).

 ^_^                          smiley
 ~_~                          content
 `_^ or ^_~                   wink
 >_<                          angry, frustrated
 ^o^                          laughing maniacally
 \^o^/                        very excited (raising hands into the air)
 -_-                          annoyed (trying to hide annoyance), also sleeping (eyes shut)
 �_�                          focused at a particular person
 ;_;                          crying
 T_T                          crying a LOT / deadpan stare
 @_@                          dazed
 o_O or O_o                   confused surprise (one eye raised)
 >_0 or 0_<                   flinching, ouch!
 >_> or <_<                   yeah, right...
 ._.                          small - hiding, discreet, intimidated
 $_$                          thinking about money
 x_x                          dead or knocked out

[edit] Complex examples

=^.^=                         blushing, or a cat face (mischievous)
~~~~>_<~~~~                   weeping horribly
^_^;                          small sweatdrop (embarrassed)
<(^_^)>,(>^_^)>, etc.         Kirby, often repeated to indicate dancing.  
<(�_�)>                       focused at a particular person with ear-phones
\(^o^)/                       very excited; '\'