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:
Why is gold making a new high, trading at $1,118.00 per ounce?
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