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Smiley

Updated : Tuesday 2 February 2010

The smiley is a form of emoticon. The original smiley was a drawing representing a yellow smiling face, hence its name. Then came its little brother, the Frowny, to express sadness… Over time, the smiley has taken on a more general meaning, covering any one of those yellow pictograms that express feelings and emotions, from surprise to a knowing wink.

  • Smileys save you time: instead of having to find the words to describe how you’re feeling in your email or chatroom post, just throw in a smiley. There are even applications that will automatically replace adjectives like sad or angry with a smiley, to brighten up your text. Now isn’t that just SO much more fun? Magazines and catalogues, too, are increasingly including smileys in their layout, in the hope it will mark them out as young and modern.

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