Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal "smiley ...

With three simple keystrokes, Scott Fahlman brought a smile to the internet. In a 1982 message board post, Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University, proposed using typographical ...

Happy birthday, sideways smiley face! Wednesday marks the 30th birthday of the emoticon. The computer symbol for “not serious” or now more generally “happiness,” made up of a colon, dash and a right ...

Stay on top of what’s happening in the Bay Area with essential Bay Area news stories, sent to your inbox every weekday. The Bay Bay Area-raised host Ericka Cruz Guevarra brings you context and ...

Emotion is something that is incredibly difficult to get across in a digital format. Aside from ending your texts with “lol” to appear less threatening, or ending a tweet with “/s” to indicate sarcasm ...

Emoticons no longer have to be anonymous smiley faces representing simple emotions. Facebook Chat now lets you use the profile picture of any user, official Page, or event on the service as an ...

PITTSBURGH -- It was a serious contribution to the electronic lexicon. :-) Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes -- a ...