In the 21st century, it is already difficult to imagine remote communication - whether it is via the Internet or SMS messages - without the use of emoticons. But few people know that the very first smiling emoticon was invented back in the 80s of the last century. This year on September 19, the smiley is celebrating its 33rd birthday.
Every year on September 19, the planet celebrates an unusual holiday - the birthday of an electronic smiley (from the English "smiley" - smiling). It was on this day in 1982 that Scott Fahlman, an American professor at Carnegie Mellon University, proposed the introduction of a sequence of characters representing a smiling face. Three consecutive symbols - a colon, a hyphen and a closing parenthesis - have become a universal symbol for a smile in electronic texts in any language.
Fahlman used the smiley in a letter he sent to the university's bulletin board, a prototype of modern Internet forums. This moment went down in history. In the same letter, the professor also used a "sad" emoticon - with an opening parenthesis.
In more than 30 years of its existence, emojis have undergone significant stylistic changes, and their sets are constantly expanding and varying on different platforms. Emoji emoticons have even appeared in the collections of top fashion designers. However, their basis remains unchanged. Used in moderation and to the point, emoticons help to revive spoken language in a soulless digital space, denoting different intonations, imitating voice modulations and facial expressions.
It is also worth noting the curious fact that World Smiley Day precedes World Smile Day, celebrated on the first Friday of October.
