You will find people using smilies in public forums, blogs, bulletin board, email messages, online chat, etc. They are commonly referred to as emoticons.

You will find people using smilies in public forums, blogs, bulletin board, email messages, online chat, etc. Smilies are very important for the web users because if there wasnt any smilies then the communication between two people online can be interpreted in a different way. When people communicate online, they type text and the same appears on the screen of the user as well as the recipient.

The communication between people in this is very different from communicating face to face. When you talk to someone directly you are able to see the body language and the facial expression of the speaker. Hence, it becomes easier for you to understand what the speaking is trying to convey. On the other hand, when you convey a message to someone through email or online chat then you are not able to see the facial expressions as well as the body language of the speaker.

All you see are the typed words. This may lead to misunderstanding and hence the communication will not be successful. However, with the use of smilies you can make the recipient understand your message in a better way.

Smilies can be in the form of text or in the form of images. Usually, you will find that in the Instant Messengers and forums smilies are usually in the form of images. On the other hand, when you write emails you can add smilies in the form of text like :-) which means a smile. In this text, you see a colon, a hyphen and a bracket which area symbols of eyes, nose and mouth respectively. Previously, the smilies were not as many as it is now.

At present, smilies are increasing in numbers so as to allow the web users take the advantages of the new and improved smilies. Needless to say, there is a huge demand for smilies among the web users as they are becoming more and more popular among the people. If you think that only the youngsters like to use smilies then you are mistaken because the youngsters as well as the adults make use of smilies.

Smilies have emerged as a replacement for facial expressions and body language in the recent years. The aim of creating and using smilies is to remove the misinterpretation of the messages that are in the form of simple text only.

Lets look at an example. When you are chatting with someone in a chat room, you call that person stupid jokingly. The recipient of this message may misinterpret your message in a different way and he or she may think that you are being impolite. However, if you add a smiley :) to the same message then the recipient will know that you were just kidding with him or her.