Emoticon

[Sarah]

An emoticon, sometimes called a smiley, is a sequence of printable characters such as or ^_^, that is intended to represent a human facial expression and convey an emotion. Use in internet forums and instant-messaging.

[Sonia]

Emotion Icon
Given the fact that sarcasm, joking, kidding, and light humor can be taken SOOOO the wrong way via internet, IMing, email, and text, people use emoticons to show facial expressions and add dynamic to the conversation.

[Little_Girl]

The antithesis of intelligent writing.

[Tina]

any of a series of characters used by people to represent emotions that cannot easily be easily expressed during the course of a chat session they are engaged in to avoid the necessity of expressing emotion face to face.

[Jason Yan]

A means of expressing emotion via Internet chat rooms and private messages.
(Note: Do not use emoticons unironically, unless youre speaking to someone who doesnt understand your language.)

[Sonia]

A simple text depiction of what ones face would look like if an online conversation were taking place in person.

[Hina Muqadas]

An icon (almost always a circle) used to represent an emotion; an advanced smily face.

[Gregory]

The term emoticon comes from emotion and icon and refers to facial expressions represented by keyboard characters. For example, the emoticon represents a happy face and represents a sad face. By inserting an emoticon into a message, you can help the recipient better understand the feeling you want to get across.
While most emoticons represent expressions, they have branched out to symbolize many other things, such as people, animals, objects, and actions. Some emoticons are meant to be read left-to-right, while others are displayed vertically. Below are examples of different types of emoticons:
Kaomoji emoticons, which originated in Japan, use Japanese symbols and uncommon characters to create unique emoticons. For example, the emoticon ＝( ^o^)ノ___ｏ represents a person throwing a bowling ball. The flipping table emoticon (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ can be used to say you are really upset.
The popularity of text-based emotions led to the creation of actual icons or emojis. Emojis (which are sometimes called emoticons) are now part of the standard character set in most mobile and desktop operating systems. This means you can insert actual smiley faces (or other expressions) instead of using a string of characters. For example, you can insert a ️ instead of using the text-based
NOTE: If you want to have good netiquette, its best to avoid using emoticons in formal communication. However, its fine (and rather common) to use emoticons in text messages, informal emails, and on social media websites.

[Kit]

A representation of a facial expression such as:-) (representing a smile), formed by various combinations of keyboard characters and used to convey the writers feelings or intended tone.