Definition, Uses and Types of Emoticons

With the increase in communication all over the world, ways of expressions have also revolutionized. One of the news ways of expressions that has become common includes the use of emoticons. 

These are keyboard characters which have been combined to form representations of facial expressions. The emoticons formed convey the user’s feelings or the tone of the message when communicating electronically. Some examples include: J, L and :-/.

Types of emoticons in use:

Emoticons used by various people may vary according to their culture or functionality of their devices. In terms of culture, the Western (from Europe and America) values the whole face in the representation of emoticons while the Eastern (from Asia) value the eyes in their representation. 

This affects the choice of the icons or symbols. In terms of functionality; the ASCII is where keyboard symbols are used to represent a face and the Icon type involves using the faces already existing in the communication device.

There are also Animated Emoticons that can be downloaded and use in browser toolbar.

If you are interested, download them below.