Facts About Emoticons

• Emoticon usage can be traced back to the mid-1800s, when writers would often use them for comic effect . 
• A transcript of one of Abraham Lincoln’s speeches, printed in the New York Times in 1862, featured a winky face. Or did it? Debate rages as to whether it’s a typo, an old-school punctuation mark or an emoticon. 
• In April, 1969, writer Vladimir Nabokov was interviewed for the New York Times and was asked: ‘How do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate past?’ Nabokov replied: ‘I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile — some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question.’ 
• In September, 1982, Scott Fahlman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the USA, suggested that : – ) and : – ( could be used on his faculty’s bulletin board to distinguish between serious posts and more humorous ones. While Fahlman is widely believed to be the inventor of modern emoticons, he hasn’t made a bean from them as he didn’t realize how popular this new language was going to be and, thus, didn’t file a patent. 
• There’s a difference between Western and Eastern emoticons. Western styles are written left to right, with the eyes on the left, nose in the centre and mouth on the right. With Asian styles, it’s not necessary to tilt your head to the left as Eastern emoticons are usually created in this format: (*_*) happy face, (T_T) sad face, (x_x) stressed face, etc.