This is a list of notable and commonly used emoticons or textual portrayals of a writer's moods or facial expressions in the form of icons. The Western use of emoticons is quite different from Eastern usage, and Internet forums, such as 2channel, typically show expressions in their own ways. In recent times, graphic representations, both static and animated, have taken the place of traditional emoticons in the form of icons. These are commonly known as emoji although the term kaomoji is more correct.
Contents
Emoticons can generally be divided into three groups: Western or horizontal (mainly from America and Europe), Eastern or vertical (mainly from east Asia), and 2channel style (originally used on 2channel and other Japanese message boards). The most common explanation for these differences is how the different cultures use different parts of the face to express emotions, i.e. eyes often play a bigger role in the East while the whole face is used more in the West.
Western
Western style emoticons are mostly written from left to right as though the head is rotated counter-clockwise 90 degrees. One will most commonly see the eyes on the left, followed by the nose (often not included) and then the mouth. Typically, a colon is used for the eyes of a face, unless winking, which uses a semicolon. However, an equal sign, a number 8, and a capital letter B are also used interchangeably to refer to normal eyes, widened eyes, or those with glasses. One can also add a "}" after the mouth symbol – "(", ")" etc. – to indicate a beard.
Eastern
Eastern emoticons generally are not rotated, and may include non-Latin characters to allow for additional complexity.
2channel emoticons
The Japanese language is usually encoded using double-byte character codes, which can be reproduced as ASCII art.
Unicode characters
Some emoticons are included in the Unicode standard—three in the Miscellaneous Symbols block, and over sixty in the Emoticons block.