Today emoticons are so pervasive that behavioral science has taken an active interest in how people use them. Among the evidence (recently surveyed by Roni Jacobson at the great new Science of Us blog ...

Since the dawn of humanity, mankind has communicated via symbols. Indeed, it was a turning point for civilisation when the Sumerians carved a GOT BARLEY? icon on a rock. (The Sumerians also invented ...

In the early days of the internet, computer scientist Scott Fahlman ran into a problem on Carnegie Mellon University’s online bulletin boards. People used the bulletin boards — a kind of primitive ...

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 ...

Pro tip: Keep the smiley faces out of your work emails, or else the person receiving the message may think you’re incompetent. That’s according to a study published in “Social Psychological and ...

With communication moving at the speed of light, it makes sense that you'd want to take the quickest path possible to inform your employees of your emotions. Doing this via text message requires just ...

Forms of communication are evolving and expanding, as evidenced by the incorporation of emoticons and emojis into our written communication. Emoji is a Japanese word used to refer to images or ...

On September 19, 1982, Carnegie Mellon professor Dr. Scott Fahlman invented the first emoticon: the humble smiley. Narratively has the exact message: Every September 19 — that's today, by the way — ...

Many people use icons in text messages as a way of expressing emotions People using the little icons that denote happy, sad or other emotions in their text messages could be racking up big bills, the ...

Women might use emoticons more than men, but men have a broader emoticon vocabulary. That’s what researchers from Rice University are saying in a new study that evaluated the use of emoticons in text ...

Concerned that using exclamation points and emoticons in your customer support correspondence will come across as frivolous or unprofessional? Don’t be. Research shows that subject matter experts who ...