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I sent my first e-mail in 1952. There weren't any computers around in those days, of course, but we did have Morse Code. Sometimes, chatting on line to a distant operator, something funny would be said and somebody would laugh. The code for that was three dashes and a dot – – – .
Now that we all have access to email, forums, chat rooms and messaging, it is again necessary to be able to express emotion on line and there are some widely accepted ways to do it. There are also some universally accepted abbreviations that can be helpful.
Because these symbols are used so much a number of sites now offer "emoticons" freely to anybody who wants them. The one I use is Smiley Xtra, a Firefox add-on. Sweet IM offers something similar for Internet Explorer, but since I don't use the Explorer I can't comment or recommend this.
The following examples are from Firefox's Smiley Xtra. It's all good fun.
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