With the popularity and rise in usage of real time text-based communications, such as instant messaging, e-mail, Internet and online gaming chat rooms, discussion boards and cell phone text messaging, came the emergence of a new language tailored to the immediacy and compactness of these new communication media. If you have ever been in a chat room or received an instant message or text message from someone that seemed to be in its own foreign language, this Webopedia Quick Reference will help you decipher the text chat lingo by providing the definitions to over 700 frequently used chat abbreviations. 

If you know of a text message abbreviation that is not included in our list, please let us know. Online auction abbreviations are in a separate Webopedia Quick Reference.

Smiley Faces -  Showing Emotions In Text Chat
A 'smiley face', often called a smiley or emoticon, is used in text communications to convey an emotion with a text message. Smiley faces are used in the same way that a person's voice changes or how facial expressions are used in face-to-face conversation. For example, if you were joking with someone and send a text message saying "GAL (get a life)" the person receiving your message may think you are making a rude comment to them. If you send the same message with a "happy smiley" : ) following the text, the person would then understand you were "smiling" - or joking around when you said that. Showing emotions through characters in text messaging helps the receiver correctly interpret your intent and meaning.

To create a smiley face you use your standard keyboard characters and punctuation marks in sequences that look like facial expressions might. When viewing text smiley faces, they are all sideways. Here are some basics to get you started in understanding what the faces are:

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 zero 0 (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  8-)

Some chat and instant message programs will automatically translate text smiley faces into graphical emoticons. 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:

:)   :(   8-)

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 in your AIM window 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 :P Sticking tongue out (raspberry) (((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 @-}--- Rose =^.^= Cat O.o Confused C=:-) A chef (\_/) (o.o) (___)0 A bunny

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 :@) Pig smile <(-_-)> Robot

Click here for Online Auction Abbreviations

Vangie 'Aurora' Beal - Writer, www.Webopedia.com
Last updated: February 22, 2008

If you know of a text message abbreviation that is not included in our list, please let us know.
 
 

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