"By 'grawlixes', I mean icons representing unprintable words, occurring within speech balloons belonging to characters who are agitated." – Gwillim Law. Via Ben Zimmer's post at Language Log on Obscenicons a century ago.
posted by Stan Carey on Jul 17, 2010 - 18 comments

Emoticons, illustrated.
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Jul 28, 2009 - 38 comments

Boy meets girl, you know how it goes. The catch? They're made from Myriad Pro. This short TED talk by someone called Rives was cute, and whimsical enough to make me smile. [more inside]
posted by oxford blue on Nov 1, 2008 - 18 comments

Cingular applies for patents for emoticons. The cell phone company this week filed a 35-claim application with the U.S. Patent Office for the use of "smilies" in their devices, apparently for some form of key that automatically enters the emoticon. Some experts say this isn't as serious/sincere as it sounds, but you can read the patent application yourself. (via TPM)
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Jan 30, 2006 - 20 comments

Ascii Farts.
posted by holloway on Nov 15, 2003 - 5 comments

Japanese Emoticons (*^_^*)
posted by hama7 on Jan 29, 2003 - 28 comments

Read it sideways. The first smiley was posted to usenet on September 19, 1982. Almost twenty years later, the original posting is uncovered on an old tape backup (after a search that smiley-inventor Scott Fahlman has dubbed the “Digital Coelacanth Project”). Of note: Mr. Fahlman thinks that AOL’s and MSN’s penchant for replacing the smiley-string with little pictures “destroys the whimsical element of the original.”
posted by sherman on Sep 13, 2002 - 26 comments

Remember Schwa? You know, the enigmatic graphic design project featuring that smiley-face of the nineties: the almond-eyed alien head? Bill Barker's sinister alien art project used to reside at www.theschwacorporation.com, but I'm not making that URL into a link for a very good reason: it's now a porn site devoted to wife-swapping. What happened?
posted by Zettai on Feb 28, 2002 - 13 comments

According to a halfway-serious survey, one-third of business e-mailers go :-( when they see :-).
They didn't ask whether it was better with the nose :-) or without :) or in semi-profile :^), or if if the toungue should be represented by the lower-case-b :-b or upper-case-P :-P, and what about when you put a smiley inside parentheses (Here's a survey on THAT topic)
Nominee for Most Trivial Topic on MetaFilter in June!
posted by wendell on Jun 27, 2000 - 12 comments