The close bracket represents a sideways smile )
Add in the colon and you have sideways eyes :
Put them together to make a smiley face
Use the dash - to add a nose
Change the colon to a semi-colon ; and you have a winking face
with a nose ;-)
Put a lower case o (halo) on top and now you have a winking, smiling angel 0
with a nose 0;-)
Use the letter 8 in place of the colon for sunglasses
Some chat and instant message programs automatically translate text smiley faces into graphics. In AOL Instant messenger (AIM), for example, if you type out the characters to make a "happy face" followed by "sad face" followed by "cool sunglasses" you would enter the following characters:
Once you've entered the text however, AIM converts the smiley text to graphics, if it can recognize the smiley pattern, and what you see on the screen will look like this:
Here are few examples of different smiley faces and their meanings:
Icon Meaning
Standard smile
With nose
:-E Buck-tooth
>-) Evil grin
Sad or frown smile
:-( Sad with nose
:-< Super sad
(((H))) Hugs
:-X Kiss on the lips
`
One eyebrow raised
:^) A broken nose
:-& tongue tied
E-
a Ham radio operator
Icon Meaning
:-# With braces
:'-) Happy Crying
{
Toupee smile
Winking smile
;-) Winking smile with nose
O
I'm an angel (boy)
O*-) I'm an angel (girl)
|-O Yawn
-D Gossip, blabbermouth
@>--;-- Rose
=^.^= Cat
Confused
C=
A chef
Icon Meaning
:-! "Foot in mouth"
:-D Laughter
:*) Drunk smile
Exclamation "What???"
:-@ Scream
:-0 Yell
%-( Confused
:-----) Long nose (Liar!)
:-.) Madonna
:-($) Put your money where your mouth is
I An egghead
|-O Yawning