It's a birthday that all of us can celebrate. Today the smiley face formed by tying a colon, hyphen, and parentheses is 25 years old. At 11:44 AM on September 19, 1982, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman typed the symbol on an early online message board, proposing that :-) be used to to denote a comment meant to be taken lightly.

Now known as emoticons, these smiley faces have dozens of different variations, and messaging programs like AOL Instant Messenger transform ;) into a colorful figure that can be customized. I have Groucho Marx smiley faces. Pretty cool stuff.

Smiley faces have even crept into more formal business-related communications as the New York Times notes:

Continue reading :-) Happy 25th birthday instant message smiley face!

:-) Happy 25th birthday instant message smiley face! originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.