Emoticons have been around a lot longer than one might think. In a March 30, 1881 item in Puck which included typographical representations of joy, melancholy, indifference, and astonishment, it was ...

In the early days of the internet, computer scientist Scott Fahlman ran into a problem on Carnegie Mellon University’s online bulletin boards. People used the bulletin boards — a kind of primitive ...

Stay on top of what’s happening in the Bay Area with essential Bay Area news stories, sent to your inbox every weekday. The Bay Bay Area-raised host Ericka Cruz Guevarra brings you context and ...

PITTSBURGH — It was a serious contribution to the electronic lexicon. Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon ...

Facebook lets you add special characters such as smileys, hearts and diamonds by using the "Alt" key codes that are built into Windows. There are several hundred special characters that you can choose ...

Think you’re being nice when you add a smiley face to the end of your email? According to one study, you could be conveying something else. The new study, titled the "The Dark Side of a Smiley," ...

VALENCIA, Spain--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Voicemod, the world leader in augmented voice and interactive audio, has signed its second IP deal in collaboration with lifestyle brand The Smiley Company ...

Smiley faces may seem benign, but typing them in work emails may be doing more harm than good. In a new study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers from ...

With three simple keystrokes, Scott Fahlman brought a smile to the internet. In a 1982 message board post, Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University, proposed using typographical ...

Pro tip: Keep the smiley faces out of your work emails, or else the person receiving the message may think you’re incompetent. That’s according to a study published in “Social Psychological and ...