So, not only is today Talk Like a Pirate Day, AND the 8th Anniversary of MAKE, it’s also the 30th birthday of the smiley!

From Wired*:

”

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman : – )

From: Scott E Fahlman

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:

: – (

”

With that post, Fahlman became the acknowledged originator of the ASCII-based emoticon. From those two simple emoticons (a portmanteau combining the words emotion and icon) have sprung dozens of others that are the joy, or bane, of e-mail, text-message and instant-message correspondence the world over.

Fahlman was not, however, the first person to use typographical symbols to convey emotions. The practice goes back at least to the mid-19th century, when Morse code symbols were occasionally used for the same purpose. Other examples exist as well.

Have a nice day!

*editor’s note: to prevent WP from rendering these as ‘automatic smileys’, spaces were inserted in between characters.