Everyone has used the smiley face at one point or another, but do you know how its use started?

Twenty-five years ago a Carnegie Mellon University professor named Scott E. Fahlman sent a message proposing the use of a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis as a joke marker. It is the earliest recorded use of the smiley face, which has since become ubiquitous with online communication.

Love them or hate them, emoticons do provide a quick and easy way to show emotion in an otherwise detached medium.