To ease the unfriendly and somewhat hostile merger of two insurance companies in 1964, and in the hopes of boosting morale, Richard Ball, owner of an advertising and public relations firm, designed the first official smiley face, placed his smiley on a button, and gave it as a gift to the employees of both insurance companies. In 1970, brothers Murray and Bernard Spain remembered Ball’s smiley face and designed an official Smiley Button, and included the words “Have a nice day” to their button design. By 1972, over 50 million people purchased the colorful and happy smiley button and it soon became a stylish and faddish way to promote peace and happiness. You too can learn how to make smileys by following the steps listed in later passages of this guide.

With the introduction of the 1980’s internet Bulletin Board, known as BBoard, the only means of expression were through text alone. Without pictures or other means to indicate emotion, the recipient often misconstrued posted messages. On September 19, 1982, Scott Fahlman, a Carnegie Mellon University BBoard member, proposed an idea that would indicate when a message’s intention was of a joking nature, via the joke marker : – ). He also proposed another maker, the : -( which would indicate that the message was to be taken more serious by the reader. He suggested that the subject line of the message include one of the markers so that readers would immediately know whether the message’s intention was a joke or if the message was of a more serious nature. Thus, the first official Internet emoticon, the Internet smiley face, was born.

How to Make Smileys

Today, Fahlman’s term “markers” has been replaced with the word “emoticons”, a linguistic blend of the two words emotion and icon. The emoticon is a text-based way of expressing a writer’s facial expression or mood and is a better way to denote statement temper, all in the hopes of improving communication between writer and recipient so that the message clear. Utilization of Emoticons is common in email correspondences, instant messages, cell phone text messaging, on Internet gaming sites and is sometimes dotted throughout casual business correspondence.

Making Smileys Emoticons

Making Smileys Emoticons to express a smile or show happiness is typed by using two to three different key stokes. The colon ( : ), the equal sign ( = ) or the number 8 can all represent the eyes of the smiley face. For the nose, one can use either the hyphen key ( -) or a lower case “o”. A smiley is not complete without the mouth and you can denote a smile with the enclose parentheses key ) or a upper case D . Your smiley should look similar to one of these smiling emoticons: ) :] :3 :c) :> =] 8) =)

On some gaming web sites, the eyes of the smiley are a bit different and are sometimes indicated with a upper case X such as in this example: XD

To indicate a winking smiley face, one would add a different set of eyes to the nose and the mouth. Your winking smiley face should look comparable to one of these emoticons: *) ;] ;D

Of course, some correspondence may make you laugh and in order to show your reader his or her comments made you laugh, you can use the following emoticons: 8D XD =D =3

From Richard Balls’ marketing idea and moral boosting smiley face to the Spain Brothers’ booming and popular smiley face cultural icon, the smiley face Emoticon is an official and commonly used way of expression a writer’s emotions and intent. With the increase in computer use and the constant, daily use of email correspondence, the smiley face has become an international way to let readers know how much you appreciate their words in the hopes to spread a little happiness around the globe.