Pixels: Facemarks

The “ASCII Art” smilies are as old as the Internet, and it started because people needed a way to show their feelings when commmunicating through text. A string of characters put together can be read by tilting your head to one side, the most famous one is of course this one : ) In Japan, the alphabet/ letters are more intricate, thus enabling more drawing-like emoticons while still only ASCII. After a while the Japanese emoticons/ facemarks became more and more different from the Western ones. A major difference is how they are read horizontally – or without having to tilt your head. Also, Japanese letters on screen are 2 bytes, not 1 byte like the Western alphabet, meaning more characters. Finally, Japanese sentences contain Chinese characters – which are phonograms, making it easier to express and recognize something visualized with letters.

In manga and anime (Japanese comic books and cartoons), feelings are often expressed to excess, almost charicature like, using certain lines or graphics. The same is seen with the facemarks, which are to a large degree influenced by manga/anime.

Here are a few that are based on 1 byte letters, to see the 2 byte ones you would have to have Asian language support enabled in your computer. Some use parentheses/brackets to illustrate the face contour, while others simply leave them out:

(^ ^) (^_^) – smiling!

(*^_^*) – smiling and blushing

\(^o^)/ – wow! raising the arms in surprise or joy

(-_-) – angry, but not showing it

(=_=”) – a reaction to bad/stupid questions or answers

(T_T) – crying

(^_^?) – confused

(>_< ) – ouch! bummer or painful experience

(^_^;) – a bit embarassed, cold sweat dripping (sometimes two semi colons are used)

(O_O) (O_o) – shock, disbelief

(^_~) (^_-) – wink

(= ^ · ^ =) ( · x · ) – kitten and rabbit