I have never been a fan of the emoticon, in fact i quite loathed it. But I realised today that i’m cured. Halleluja.
According to wikipedia, the emoticon goes back to 1857. The entry also includes this:
In an 1969-04-16 New York Times interview, Alden Whitman asked writer Vladimir Nabokov: “How do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate past?” Nabokov answered, “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.”
ha. we’ve come a long way from this (initial smiley proposal 1982):
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
:-)
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:-(
to this (wikipedia):
(_:^(|) Homer Face
:-) at last!
historical context wins over luddite
Comment by imo — November 26, 2006 @ 7:56 am