;-)

:-0

:-(

Emoticons: love them or hate them, they are here to stay (or at least they seem to be, millions of people use them regularly)

.....but who was the first person to suggest them?

Professor Scott Fahlman, of Carnegie Mellon University, made the suggestion, on the 19th of September 1982, that :-( be attached to a serious for serious item, and :-) to a joke or sarcastic comment.

Fed up with weeks of unhappy wrangling when a comment that was supposed to be lighthearted was taken as serious he was trying to avoid such miscommunication.

"I noticed within a few days that people around Carnegie Mellon were using it in their own emails. I noticed within a couple of weeks it had made it across the very primitive network we had in those days to other schools."

(Thanks to Randy Cassingham of Thisistrue for enlightening me....;-)

Rus