Emoticon, Smileys, Emojis

Summary

An Emoticon denotes individual characters or strings, such as : - ) or ^ _ ^, which express mood or emotional states in written communication. The word Emoticon consists of the words Emotion and Icon, and its history begins in the 19th century.

Today, Emojis such as 😄 represent emotions graphically, as pictograms or ideograms. Their range extends well beyond Smileys, which depict facial expressions. They express feelings and replace longer words or concepts, with symbols for food, plants, animals and weather. Cheerful emojis are the most common; in 2015, 😂 was the most frequently used. In Germany, the mouse emoji 🐭 is unusually popular.

According to a 2017 study, emojis make positive messages seem even more positive and can also make negative messages appear more positive.