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Add a Little Zest to Your Correspondence
 Have you ever heard of emoticons? Or smileys? They were those cute little round bodies with smiling faces that were showing up on computers everywhere. The past tense “were” is used because they are not just little smiley faces anymore; they have evolved and evolved big time.
The purpose of these smileys or emoticons is to aide you in conveying an emotion that is not always apparent in the words that are used in communication. This allows the writers to convey many different and clearer senses of the emotion or attitude that they are trying to portray in text.
One fairly common place to see smileys or emoticons is on a message board as it allows the poster to more accurately convey the emotions behind the text. There seems to be a great more seen when the subject on the message board is controversial and getting a wide range of opinions. Of course emails are very popular places for emoticons, they can be repeated several times for emphasis or any other way the writer wishes.
 Chat rooms and instant messaging are both very common and popular places to see smileys and emoticons. They may even be considered at type of shorthand, much like the acronyms that are so popular. Instead of writing I love you in a message someone may opt to insert a heart or even a smiley with a beating heart. They even have ones that signify the end of a conversation such as one blowing kisses, or waving or simply giving a hug.
In some instances keystrokes may be used to create basic emoticons, the process normally involves using 2 or more strokes that pretty much tell the system the type of emoticon to create. It is actually fairly easy to memorize the basic keystrokes used for the most common ones and the strokes key them into text.
Fortunately, some of the services do not require the user to experiment and try various keystrokes to create an emoticon. For instance message boards usually have a box of available emoticons and the mouse is used to choose the one you want and it appears in the message. The same options are normally available with instant messaging as well and some of the messenger services provide a limited and basic selection. If you want to pay for them these services usually have a much broader range of different types and MSN emoticons. |