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- Abbreviation for emotion icon. In electronic communication, a multi-character symbol, created with ASCII characters, to express emotions and physical characteristics that would normally be communicated by body language and facial expressions in face-to-face communication. Note: Emoticons are most often used in informal e-mail messages and newsgroup postings and are usually designed to be viewed sideways. Some examples of emoticons are:
Symbol Meaning Why? :-) happiness a smiley face :-( unhappiness, disappointment a frown ;-) slyness, "just kidding" a wink :-o surprise, shock open mouth :-\ irony tilted mouth - Browse Related Terms: A-condition, alphanumeric, arithmetic shift, asynchronous transmission, Baudot code, block character, code character, comma-free code, emoticon, end-of-selection character, equal-length code, FLAG, serial transmission, start-stop modulation, stroke, stroke edge, SYN, transliterate, WRU