Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language

by Gretchen McCulloch

Here’s the original message that he posted, dug up from dusty 1980s archives, from back when computer records were preserved on reel-to-reel tapes: 19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-) From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c> I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-( The idea of a simplified smiling face already had a considerable history, so Fahlman’s sideways proposal was straightforward to interpret. It was also easy to type, and was thus quickly picked up by other participants in the message thread, and within a couple months people were using sideways text faces beyond Carnegie Mellon and had come up with a wide variety of creative expansions on the sideways idea, including non-face examples like the heart <3 and the rose @>-->--. Many of the more elaborate examples, like sideways portraits of famous people, circulated more in lists of clever faces than in actual usage. (It’s unclear when a person would ever need to invoke Abraham Lincoln by smiley, but here he is ==(:-)= complete with tall hat and beard.) A few classics like :-) :-( ;-) :’-( :-P, and later their noseless variants :) :( ;) :’( :P, remained the most popular.