The smiley is a quarter century old. We use it in our emails and handwritten notes without a second thought. It smoothens the tone and emotion of sentences. From it, a long list of other emoticons evolved. The ingenuity of Professor Scott E. Fahlman’s simple colon-hyphen-paranthesis has transcended boundaries and languages to become universally acceptable. The smiley has brightened many a days and many a faces. Our lives have never been the same since. Here is a toast to 25 years of fun and a wish for another 25 more. Cheers!

Digital ‘smiley face’ turns 25 – Yahoo News

DANIEL LOVERING, Associated Press Writer

PITTSBURGH – It was a serious contribution to the electronic lexicon. :-) Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal “smiley face” in a computer message.

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