Popular Emoticon turns 25

The popular emoticon celebrates its 25th anniversary this week. The combination of certain punctuation marks has become a simple, effective way of communicating emotions in text messages and emails and continues to evolve over two decades since its creation.

The original sideways smiley face, created with a colon followed by a dash and finished with a left parenthesis, has sparked the creation of thousands of variations. Many emoticons are now animated and can represent a vast array of emotions. The emoticon has become a mainstay of electronic conversation as the years have passed and new communication methods have grown in popularity.

"My favorite one is the 'Oh, I'm suprised,' because if you are telling someone a story and you are like, 'Oh my gosh, I can not believe that,' it is better to use the face than writing 'Oh my gosh, I can not believe that' because then someone kind of understands if you were sitting in front of them, what kind of face you'd be making," Maggie Shehan, KU senior, said.

Dictionaries of emoticons have been created to teach users different expressions, which can include combinations that represent celebrities, historic figures and actions. It appears that the emoticon is here to stay after 25 years.