Happy Birthday, Smiley Face Icon

For those of us who feel pretty cutting-edge because we've been using smiley faces and other emoticons in our emails and instant messages for the past few years, guess what? The smiley emoticon is 25 years old.

One of the first uses of a colon, dash and parenthesis to form a sideways smiley face occurred on Sept. 19, 1982, when Carnegie Mellon University Professor Scott E. Fahlman suggested in an online academic bulletin board (the precursor to chat rooms and instant messaging) that there was a need for symbols to convey emotion, the nuance of which often is often missed by readers.

"I propose the following character for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways," Fahlman wrote. "Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-( "

Twenty five years later, emotions for every kind of emotion, mood, and emphasis take the form of colorful, often animated faces. Fahlman's look back on his emoticon history web page is a good read, especially since he answers emoticon-critics' charges that "good writers should have no need to explicitly label their humorous comments." In part, he says, "If Shakespeare were tossing off a quick note complaining about the lack of employee parking spaces near the Globe Theater, he might have produced the same kind of sloppy prose that the rest of us do. Besides, Shakespeare's work is full of clichés and his spelling was atrocious. :-)"

To celebrate the birth of the little guy who has made a big splash and spawned a slew of emoticons, Fahlman and his Carnegie Mellon colleagues have started an annual contest for innovation in tech-assisted, person-to-person innovation. Yahoo! is sponsoring The Smiley Award, which comes with a $500 cash prize.

Now, if we could just celebrate when the words "emotion" and "icon" merged to make "emoticon"... ;-)

LINKS: Digital 'Smiley Face' Turns 25 [AP via Yahoo!]
History / Scott Fahlman [Carnegie Mellon University] 

Related: The Secret Life of Emoticons