Of the many things that are Internet, chatting is one of the most important of activities. In fact, for many, it is the only activity. Glued to the screen, all day all night, there are human souls out there who prefer to talk to their peers online rather than meet them in person. And why not, this is after all the age of technology and everything that can be done electronically should be done. Gets you thinking, doesn’t it?
Anyway, getting back to the subject, whether you’re an addict chatter or detest the idea, one thing’s for sure — everybody’s done it at least once in an Internet-lifetime. But chatting on the Internet is also about talking in a whole different language, one that is not used in our everyday lives. And that’s where the smileys come in.
Something on line with the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt, the smileys, or emoticons as they are also called, have evolved into being the main language of the Internet. It is described as a sequence of characters on the computer keyboard. Smileys usually follow punctuation (or in place of the punctuation) at the end of a sentence. A smiley tells someone what you really mean when you make an offhand remark. They are also called emoticons because they intend to convey emotion! And to know more about this language just click to NetLingo http://www.netlingo.com/smiley.cfm. Here you’ll get a list of smileys that are common in use. Not a monster smiley list, just a nice list of the essentials that also has a different section for smileys that are used to convey a rather harsh and rude emotion. There is also a chatting dictionary here that has been alphabetically assembled. Click here and find interesting meanings to often simple sounding words and letters. Another smiley list that is helpful is The Unofficial Smiley Dictionary http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/ascii/smileys.html that has categorized its lists as Widely Used Smileys, Midget, Mega, Usenet and Emotional Smileys. I wonder if you can find something here that you couldn’t in the earlier site, and vice versa. But how did the simley evolve? Where did it come from and what is the genesis of this interesting style of communicating? This you can find at the site, The First Smiley :-) http://research.microsoft.com/~mbj/Smiley/Smiley.html. A single page, this address takes you on a ride through one of the most important moments of Internet history. You can read that ground breaking email that started the chatting revolution on September 19, 1982. The first smiley, of course was now ubiquitous :-).
Though smiley’s are universal, they have different dialects. Some would even argue that there are two different types of smileys — there are the regular smileys and then there are the Japanese smileys which can be found at http://club.pep.ne.jp/~hiroette/en/facemarks/. The one difference that you immediately come across when going thorough this site is the way smileys are expressed in the Japanese lingo. While the English based smileys are vertical based, meaning you have to tilt your head to get a meaning out of them, the Japanese are horizontal based, meaning you can read them as it is and less pressure on the eyes and on the tilting neck. There are a number of expressions that you can get hold of here, so you log on to a whole new world here.
One truly dedicated site for the smiley cause is Smiley Unlimited http://www.smiliesunlimited.com/. Not only do you get the meanings of the regular smileys, you can also recommend some of your own, stuff that you invented while on one of those all-night chatting binges. There is also a Hall of Fame and a Hall of Shame, as well as a Copyright section.
Simleys are something that aren’t only used for chatting, as is obvious at the site Smilie Games http://www.smiliegames.com/. There’s Bug Buster, Soccer Shoot, Formula Racing and Super Bowling and a whole bunch of other games. Have fun and see your smileys in action, on-screen are you go crazy, clicking your smiley to the checkered flag.
Quite often, when we access a site, up pops a window that promises us a whole new category and new super powered smileys. This is the ad of the site, Smilie Central http://www.smileycentral.com/ that essentially offers emoticons for the messenger software. A whole lot of action, you can use these for various chatting-ware. However, the downside here is that you can only get these if you download a particular software. Now, if you are willing to risk getting a virus onto your precious PC, then go ahead. I for one am still content with protecting my stuff on my hard disk and using the old fashioned and regular smileys. Happy chatting.
Of the many things that are Internet, chatting is one of the most important of activities. In fact, for many, it is the only activity. Glued to the screen, all day all night, there are human souls out there who prefer to talk to their peers online rather than meet them in person. And why not, this is after all the age of technology and everything that can be done electronically should be done. Gets you thinking, doesn’t it?
Though smiley’s are universal, they have different dialects. Some would even argue that there are two different types of smileys — there are the regular smileys and then there are the Japanese smileys which can be found at 
