SMILE, PLEASE Wednesday 19 September was the 25th anniversary of the invention of the smiley character in online communications, also known as the emoticon. The :-) symbol, necessarily created from standard keyboard characters, was invented on 19 September 1982 by Scott E Fahlman in a post on a bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University. It formed part of a thread on the way humorous remarks could be tagged to avoid misunderstandings. His message was brief, though a tad ungrammatical: "I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways." Scott Fahlman is these days the Research Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 554 Saturday 22 September 2007 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Sent each Saturday to at least 50,000 subscribers by e-mail and RSS Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448 http://www.worldwidewords.org US advisory editor: Julane Marx ------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------- World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2007. All rights reserved. The Words Web site is at http://www.worldwidewords.org . ------------------------------------------------------------------- You may reproduce this newsletter in whole or part in free online newsletters, newsgroups or mailing lists provided that you include the copyright notice above. Reproduction in printed publications or on Web sites needs prior permission, for which you should contact the editor at [EMAIL PROTECTED] . ------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.isoc-ny.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
