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If You Love Music World You Can Be a DJ.
http://vur.me/s/DJ
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Emoticons are showing up everywhere! They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and
emoticons are a picture. They are the facial expression of a mood depicted by punctuation and
letters that form an image and help convey the writer's intended message. The facial expression of
an emoticon enhances the depth of plain text in a way that touches a reader on the emotional
level. It is a visual message to the reader that words alone cannot express. In speaking for itself,
an emoticon is a visual expression that requires no explanation.
Ever wonder where Emoticons came from?
Where did the word emoticons come from? It is what we call a portmanteau which means a word
that is a blend of two or more words into one new word. Emoticon is a portmanteau that is derived
from the words emotion and icon. Emoticons have become widely used today as the popularity of
text messaging and emailing have become a dominant form of communication. Web forums,
instant messaging and online games are home for the emoticon's simplified method of transmitting
an emotional impression upon the receiver. We can track emoticons in English writing back to the
19th century when they were used typically in very casual or humorous writing. However, Scott
Fahlman of the Carnegie Mellon University first proposed the use of emoticons in digital form on
the internet in 1982.
The growing utility of emoticons in communications has prompted many computer programmers to
replace text emoticon versions with pictorial images. These programs can automatically replace
the text-typed emoticon with a small corresponding image. Graphic designers have rendered
these images to a new level of pictorial artistry. The nonverbal elements are cleverly applied in the
pixel art conveying voice inflections, body gestures and every imaginable facial expression.
Animation makes the impact even more pronounced. The development and evolution of emoticons
from simple punctuation and letters into color graphic symbols has taken on an important role in
the ever-increasing role of digital communication.
Emoticons are used throughout the world.
The use of emoticons is not exclusive to the English language. They are used worldwide
conveying a style that is culturally flavored in many languages. Western style emoticons are read
from left to right, as the English language would be read. Asian stylized emoticons do not require
the reader to tilt their head to the left to decipher the image, but rather the image is displayed
upright. Using a smiley face example, in Western style the use of a colon to represent two eyes
and a right-sided hyphen forms the mouth. The Asian variation is formed with an asterisk followed
by an underscore and then another asterisk to depict the two eyes and mouth of a smiley. Letters
in the Korean alphabet are frequently used for their shape to create the emoticon image. Doubling
a particular punctuation or letter creates emphasis in a way that is universally understood to mean
something of a greater amount. Combining emoticon styles continues to evolve in traversing
language barriers that would have otherwise hindered the communication between diverse
populations.
If we think of emoticons as an emerging language, the vocabulary is no longer in an infancy stage.
The development of the smiley, for example, has expanded itself from an individual smiley to an
entire family! There are twosome smileys that may represent a couple animated in gleeful action;
there are smiley families of multiple numbers representing crowds in a roar at a sporting event.
Character smileys include aliens, angels and animals, just to name a few. Feeling smileys run the
gamut of expressing anger, rage, sadness, joy, despondency, serenity or fear. Cartooning is a
representation that requires a specialized common knowledge between the writer and the receiver
because not all cartoon representations are universal. A Mickey Mouse representation would most
likely communicate the message, however, a little known figure such as Ugio may not translate the
fullest tenor depending on the audience/reader. Categorizing emoticons by their creators has
morphed a new industry into the business marketplace.
Ownership rights to emoticons in the business world are being defined through legal process. In
2000, Despair, Inc. was able to obtain a U.S. trademark registration for a certain frowny emoticons
when used in industry-specific applications. The company then issued a press release stating that
they would sue internet users who typed their frowny emoticons. This public threat was of no
enforceable substance and the open marketplace gave it little attention. Inventions that assist in
communicating with emoticons may be protected under US patents. In 2008, a Russian
entrepreneur claimed to have been granted the trademark on certain emoticons and in 2006,
Finland granted trademark rights for the use of several emoticons associated with various
products and services under a European Community Trademark. Unicode has been developed as
the industry standard in guiding the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text
expressed in most of the world's writing systems, which includes emoticons. It is a nonprofit
consortium committed to defining the standard. The Unicode Standard in its latest version is a
compilation of more than 109,000 characters, code charts and encoding methodologies. It
specifies the enumeration of character properties and reference files pertaining to emoticons. The
consortium's goal is ultimately to standardize character encoding schemes that are unlimited in
size and scope as well as compatible in multilingual environments. Emoticons have become a
commodity with identified value, legal standing and worldwide appeal.
Some may think the revolutionary introduction of emoticons into the digital world was the invention
of a modern day mastermind, but they are not something new. In fact, the idea seems to have
derived quite naturally from a number of sources. Prior to the 1980s, the teletype machine used
emoticons to communicate. The teletype was somewhat limited due to its typewriter keyboard
being a standard alphabet plus several extra characters, but the machine operators developed
shorthand notations to communicate with each other. As computers began to replace the teletype,
clever writers expanded the trade and the artistry of emoticons continues to develop.In digital
communication, emoticons are a proven and useful writing tool. What may be lacking in face-to-
face interaction, is bridged when this clever emotion-icon is used. And who would have ever
imagined that silly smiley emoticons could become so famous and useful?
download emoticons
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_Mandall
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If You Love Music World You Can Be a DJ.
http://vur.me/s/DJ
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