Don't :- ( It's time to celebrate the emoticon's birthday by remembering the simpler days when all smileys were sideways. Eric Mack has been a CNET contributor since 2011. Eric and his family live 100 ...

Today, everybody knows that combination of a colon, dash and parenthesis is a smiley face. Until 32 years ago this week, that's all it was, a series of nonsensical punctuation. Then, Scott Fahlman, a ...

Happy birthday to the emoticon -- the sideways smiley-face that changed the way we communicate emotion online.Consisting of three keyboard strokes (colon, hyphen, close parentheses), the popular ...

To some, an email isn't complete without the inclusion of :-) or :-(. To others, the very idea of using "emoticons" - communicative graphics - makes the blood boil and represents all that has gone ...

Can emoticons affect relationships? After 30 years of using them, we decide to have a look at the power of emoticons... It's impossible for some people to go a single text or email without including a ...

The emoticon, used to illustrate an emotion using an icon, celebrates its 30th birthday this month. Test your knowledge in our interactive quiz. By Mark Oliver and Dan Palmer 10 September 2012 • ...