Punctuation, read sideways
44 faces built from nothing but punctuation, invented in 1982 for terminals that had nothing better. They are not emoji, and the resemblance between the two words is a coincidence — which is where most of the confusion starts.
:-)
colon · hyphen · bracket
Quick answer
A face made from ordinary punctuation, read sideways. Tilt your head left and :-) resolves into two eyes, a nose and a smile. Nothing in it is a special character — it is the same colon and bracket on every keyboard, which is exactly why it was invented: in 1982 there was nothing else available.
That also makes it the opposite of an emoji. An emoji is a single Unicode character your device draws as a picture, so it looks different on every platform. An emoticon is punctuation, so it looks identical everywhere and needs no font support at all.
How they are built
Emoticons are not a list to memorise so much as a small grammar. Nearly every face below is one choice from each of these three slots, in this order — which means you can build one that is not on this page and still be understood.
Always first, and the slot that sets intent, not volume. Swap the eyes and the same mouth means something else.
Optional, and the most-argued part of the whole system. Nothing else in a face dates it so reliably.
Always last, and the slot that sets the volume. Most of the vocabulary is one mouth swapped for another.
Read across the three: ; plus - plus P gives ;-P, a wink with the tongue out. Drop the nose and it is ;P. Nothing else needs to be learned.
7 emoticons
The whole family descends from these. Widen the mouth to raise the volume; the eyes barely move.
Fahlman's original, nose included. It has aged into something slightly formal.
The same face with the hyphen dropped. Now far more common than the original.
An open, toothy mouth. Louder than a smile, quieter than a laugh.
The workhorse positive emoticon. Enthusiastic without being sarcastic.
The eyes are flatter, which calms the whole thing down.
The 8 is spectacles, not sunglasses. Pleased, and a bit nerdy with it.
A clown or a big nose. Almost the only common use of o in the nose slot.
6 emoticons
Invert the mouth and everything else stays put. This symmetry is what makes the system easy to learn.
Fahlman proposed this the same day — originally to flag posts that were not jokes.
The everyday form. Mild disappointment rather than distress.
The apostrophe is a tear leaving the eye. The only widely used punctuation-as-tear.
Reversed, so the mouth comes first. Alarm, not sadness.
A square-bracket mouth. More sullen than sad.
The angle bracket drags the whole mouth down. Rare, and emphatic when it turns up.
7 emoticons
Where the eyes finally do some work. A wink changes the meaning of the sentence before it more than any mouth does.
Marks the preceding sentence as a joke, or softens something that could sting.
Identical in meaning; the shorter form is now the default.
Cheeky, not rude: teasing, or owning up to a bad pun.
The most-used playful emoticon, and it skews younger than :-P.
Wink and tongue together. Suggestive in a way neither is alone.
Eyes screwed shut. There is no colon at all, so it sits outside the usual grammar.
Softer than XD. The capital is louder, which is a strange thing for punctuation to manage.
5 emoticons
An O mouth is the whole effect. The eyes decide whether it is delight or alarm.
A round open mouth. Astonishment, not necessarily bad.
The everyday form; often doubles as a gasp.
The lowercase o is a smaller mouth, so it reads as milder.
Flat eyes with an open mouth. Startled, not delighted.
Glasses and an open mouth. Someone has just seen the invoice.
7 emoticons
The most useful group in practice, and the one where a single character does the most work.
A slanted mouth. Sceptical, awkward or unconvinced, depending on what precedes it.
The most common way to express mild disapproval without saying so.
The mirror of :-/ and functionally identical. Which one you reach for is habit.
The angle bracket is a furrowed brow. Adding it to any face makes it cross.
A flat mouth. Withholding a reaction, which is of course a reaction.
Saying nothing on purpose — a secret, or biting your tongue.
The % is crossed eyes: confused, drunk, or too many hours at a screen.
5 emoticons
The only group where the best-known entry is not a face at all.
Rotate it clockwise. The defining glyph of the emoticon era, and still in use.
The slash cracks it. One of the very few built by modifying another.
The asterisk is pursed lips.
Common as a sign-off, where the shorter form reads as more casual.
A flushed, tongue-tied mouth. Rare now, but nobody misreads it.
7 emoticons
Where the form is stretched furthest — halos, horns and, occasionally, an animal that is not a face at all.
The O is a halo. Innocence, almost always feigned.
The same brow as the angry face, but over a smile. Plotting, not cross.
Distinct from 8-): B is shades, 8 is spectacles. Cool against studious.
Closed eyes above an open mouth. Bored, or genuinely tired.
The J pushes the mouth sideways. The emoticon for not quite meaning it.
Left-handed, or simply contrary. Playful in the way writing backwards is playful.
Not a face at all. Proof the notation stretches further than the grammar suggests.
The one argument
Both are correct and they mean exactly the same thing, but the choice dates you more reliably than anything else in the face. The nose is original — Fahlman’s 1982 post included it — and it now reads as slightly formal, or simply as older. Dropping it is faster to type and has become the default almost everywhere.
There is no rule and no consensus, so it is habit rather than correctness. The only practical note is consistency: mixing :-) and :( in the same message looks like a typo rather than a choice.
Not the same thing
The names look related and are not. Emoticon is a blend of emotion and icon; emoji is Japanese for picture-character. Everything else follows from one being punctuation and the other being a character.
| Emoticon :-) | Emoji 🔥 | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Several ordinary characters your eye assembles into a face | One Unicode character your device draws as a picture |
| Reading it | Sideways — :-) needs a head tilt | Upright, as a picture |
| Appearance | Identical everywhere, because it is only punctuation | Different artwork on Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft |
| Font support | None needed — any system that shows text shows it | Needs a font with that character, or you get an empty box |
| Origin | Carnegie Mellon, USA, 19 September 1982 | Japanese mobile phones, 1997 onward |
| Where the name comes from | A blend of emotion and icon | Japanese 絵 (e, picture) + 文字 (moji, character) |
There is a third family in between: kaomoji, the Japanese faces read upright. They are text like an emoticon but draw on a far larger character set, which is why (´･ω･`) can have cheeks and :-) cannot.
1982
On 19 September 1982, Scott Fahlman posted to a Carnegie Mellon bulletin board proposing :-) as a way to mark posts meant as jokes. Text-only discussion boards had a persistent problem — sarcasm read as sincerity — and this was a solution that needed no new technology at all.
The second half of the proposal is almost always dropped from the retelling. Fahlman suggested :-( not for sadness but to flag posts that were not jokes, reasoning that those were becoming the rarer case and so the more economical thing to mark. The face survived; his meaning for it did not.
Emoji arrived fifteen years later and somewhere else entirely — on Japanese mobile phones, starting in 1997. The two traditions are unrelated, and only met when emoji reached Western keyboards in 2011. That history is covered separately.
Take the lot
All 44 as a single space-separated line, in the order they appear above.
:-) :) :-D :D =) 8-) :o) :-( :( :'( D: :-[ :-< ;-) ;) :-P :P ;P XD xD :-O :O :-o =O 8-O :-/ :/ :-\ >:( :-| :-X %-) <3 </3 :-* :* :-$ O:-) >:-) B-) |-O :-J (: <(")
Questions
A face made from ordinary punctuation, read sideways. :-) is a colon, a hyphen and a closing bracket, which your eye assembles into eyes, a nose and a smile when tilted. Nothing about it is a picture or a special character — it is the same punctuation available on any keyboard, arranged so it resembles an expression.
No, and the similar names are a coincidence. An emoticon is several ordinary characters arranged to look like a face; an emoji is a single Unicode character that your device draws as a picture. Emoji is not from emotion — it is Japanese, 絵 (e, picture) plus 文字 (moji, character). Emoticon genuinely is a blend of emotion and icon, which is why the two words look related when they are not.
Scott Fahlman, on a Carnegie Mellon University bulletin board on 19 September 1982. He suggested :-) to mark posts meant as jokes. The second half is usually forgotten: he proposed :-( not for sadness but to flag posts that were not jokes, on the grounds that those were becoming the rarer case.
Both are correct, and the choice dates you more than anything else in the face. :-) is the original and now reads as slightly formal or older; :) is shorter and has become the default. There is no difference in meaning, and no group agrees on which looks better, so it is purely habit.
Direction. Western emoticons are read sideways and use only ASCII punctuation, which is why they are so short. Japanese kaomoji are read upright and draw on kana and characters borrowed from other scripts, so they can show cheeks, arms and whole scenes — (´･ω･`) needs no head tilt. Both are text faces; only the second is a kaomoji.
Many chat apps substitute automatically, replacing :) with a yellow smiley as you type. It is a setting rather than something inherent to the text — look for emoticon conversion or automatic emoji in the app's preferences. Once converted, the character stored is the emoji, so turning the setting off later will not bring the punctuation back in old messages.
Yes, though less than before emoji reached every keyboard. They persist where emoji are awkward or unavailable: commit messages, terminals, code comments, plain-text email and monospaced contexts generally. :) and :/ in particular survive because they are faster to type than opening a picker.
Research notes
Fahlman's own account of the 19 September 1982 bulletin-board post, including why he proposed :-( for posts that were not jokes.
Unicode's definitions, which treat emoticons and emoji as separate concepts and give the Japanese etymology of emoji.
Keep exploring
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
All three families side by side — emoticons, kaomoji and Lenny — and what separates them.
Compare them(´･ω･`)
The Japanese faces read upright, with a character set large enough for arms and cheeks.
Browse kaomoji📟💬😂
The other tradition: where emoji actually came from, and why 1999 is the wrong answer.
Read the history