How To Use Emotion Icons To Spice Up Your Online Communications
By Craig Thornburrow

There is hardly a medium since the beginning of man that has had such an impact on human communication as the Internet. Any communication system available today offline is replicated online, at least to some extent. You can write, chat and even talk all online.But there’s nothing like a physical expression of emotions. It just couldn’t be represented in writing. But that was until a while ago. Internet junkies decided to com up with a way of representing their emotions and facial expressions with “emotional icons” or simply “emoticons”. However, these emoticons or “smileys”, as they are alternatively called are used only for informal communications like during casual chatting, friendly emails, etc.Emoticons or smileys are represented as a sequence of printable characters, which converts into a small image depicting a particular facial expression or other informal gestures like a cup of tea, flowers or even national flags. They are the Internet’s shorthand system, in a way.So, instead of just writing “hey, how are you doing?” which is dry and expresses no emotions, something like “hey, how are you doing : ) ” delivers some warmth, indicating a smile.Emoticons are mostly used in chat rooms, online discussion boards and informal emails between friends, co-workers, family members and people in an informal relationship. There are used to convey love, warmth, jokes and whatever emotions we cherish and share physically.Emotional icons are continually evolving with more and more being added to the list every year. Nowadays, there are even sites online which specialize only in developing and promoting these emotional icons. If you do a search for “emoticon sites” you may find quite a handful of this type of sites.If you have a plan of being in chat rooms or engaging in discussions in any of the forums online, you may want to study a little about emoticons to help spice up your discussions.There are basically 3 ways of mastering emoticons:Get a Guide to Emoticons: For everything under the sun, there is a book, report or some sort of writing giving an in-depth analysis of it available online. And emoticons are no exception to the rule. If you do a quick search online for ebooks or guides on emotional icons, emoticons or smileys, you will find quite a few useful ones.Sign up with a Specialized Site: There are a lot of sites online offering only one thing- emoticons and how to use them. If you sign up with any one of these sites, you should be able to pick up quickly and learn the most important and then, the sophisticated emotional icons used online.Be One of the Dudes ;-) (wink) : If you wanna be a fish, go swimming. If you want to be a master emoticonist (whatever that means :)) (laugh), then take a plunge into the sea of chatting and the ocean of online forums and you will find yourself learning (and using) emoticons faster than you think.So, go learn some emoticons yourself and show the world you are not only a humorous person physically, you are textually, too. Got it? :)
Craig Thornburrow is an acknowledged expert in his field. You can get more free advice on emoticons and free funny emoticons at http://www.emotioniconshq.comArticle Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Craig_Thornburrow