How to write a smiley
Maybe it’s just me, or maybe I share this feeling with other people. What, you ask, what? I can’t stand how people write smilies…
Perhaps I’m overreacting, but why are people massacring their poor smilies? Or expressing them so they look like refugees from a leper colony? To me, a smiley should always consist of three elements: eyes, nose and mouth!
Therefore, I declare all smilies that look like this extinct:
Please, give your smilies a nose! Stop scaring kids! 
PS. If you want to post smiley examples in plain text in your comments, make sure to have them on a separate line to avoid image escaping when posting them (they will still be escaped in the preview). DS.
33 Comments/Reactions
October 9th, 2006 at 23:16
Well, that’s bad, I agree. But even worse in my opinion are those who write their smileys upside-down, like (-:. After all, we’re not in Arabia, and we write and read from left to right.
October 10th, 2006 at 0:14
Duh, Robert. Smilies don’t deserve noses. :p
October 10th, 2006 at 0:24
SilentWarrior – I’m from israel and in hebrew you write rtl (:
That was a bad post :) hehehe.
I’m with Jens – Smilies don’t deserve noses :) .
(Don’t ask how i did that ;))
October 10th, 2006 at 2:38
Nose??? To complicating…
October 10th, 2006 at 3:15
It’s to much work to type the dash for a superfluous nose. If you’re a touch typist you have to lift your right hand and slightly rotate it counter clockwise and stretch up to type the dash character. People who use smilies know what they are when they don’t have a nose. Smilies don’t need nodes
October 10th, 2006 at 4:54
October 10th, 2006 at 5:34
Thank you! That needed to be said!
Even worse: *_* (and its endless variants).
October 10th, 2006 at 5:36
Oops. I guess Textile (or whaterver) swallowed that. That was supposed to be:
October 10th, 2006 at 6:11
I think people more often use :) than :-)
My non-scientific evidence:
:-)
http://www.google.com/codesearch?hl=en&lr=&q=%3A-%5C%29&btnG=Search
Results 1 – 10 of about 121,000
:)
http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=+:%5C)&start=10&sa=N
Results 11 – 20 of about 354,000
(and yes there are false positives…)
October 10th, 2006 at 7:31
I used to write smileys with a nose, and I was a bit annoyed by the no-nose smileys, too. Now I’ve accepted it and embraced it.
I think the main reason for no-nose smileys is that several popular forum applications use colon+right bracket to insert the normal smiley, so people got used to writing their smilies that way.
October 10th, 2006 at 9:07
You’re 100% right. I also think japanese Emoticons (Sorry, this part of the article is not available in the english version) are abhorrence!
October 10th, 2006 at 9:09
Ahhh shaddap =P
October 10th, 2006 at 10:12
Microsoft have got The First Smiley online… sorry to say it has the nose. I just use
which is easier.
October 10th, 2006 at 10:42
jap’s style are more expessive ^^
and the longer eyes is cuter , such as =)
October 10th, 2006 at 12:11
I agree. Only Japanese smileys are allowed not to have noses ^_^
October 10th, 2006 at 14:53
Zomg, so many variations of
Let’s all proclaim
as THE smile to use. It’s got bigger teeth than a wolf you Red Riding Hood! 
October 10th, 2006 at 15:50
Robert, the smileys that are used to replace textual smileys on your very own web site does not have any noses!
October 10th, 2006 at 20:26
Tanny,
That’s an interesting perspective: keyboard layout. In a Swedish keyboard layout dash (-) is the key next to colon (:), so it’s very easy.
wioota,
Yes, but the most common thing in the world is that the majority of people do things “wrong”…
Gustaf,
Oh, the irony!
).
But then I have to say that image smiley representations are totally different (although I naturally resent the smiley images in WordPress…
October 11th, 2006 at 3:40
I’d give smilies a nose, for the the fact that the nose is between the eyes, not below.
October 11th, 2006 at 18:35
Switch the bloody things off then!
October 11th, 2006 at 19:34
Olly,
Ah, but I like images, I just resent that they don’t have a nose.
October 12th, 2006 at 10:03
Oh, I forgot to mention, empirical evidence aside, I think the nose on a smiley just looks silly ;^)
Anyways, I was here to get the usage details for elo (an Electric Light Orchestra fan or just coincidence?) so I best stop paffing around and skedaddle.
October 12th, 2006 at 18:24
Believe it or not, there’s also an accessibility issue here, at least for Mac users: VoiceOver, OS X’s built-in content-speaking utility, is preconfigured to recognise smiley and wink – but only with a nose!
October 12th, 2006 at 21:51
wioota,
Yeah, go for ELO now instead!
Nick,
Great, the case is closed then! All people who care, add noses to your smilies now!
October 13th, 2006 at 8:51
Ok Robert…
:~)
October 18th, 2006 at 16:38
Hmm… I must be a weirdo, cause I always give my smileys a nose but not the anorectic version. Mine always have a nice round nose:
)
Feels more jolly for some reason. Maybe I’m just trying to compensate for my tiny little bud… ;o)
October 18th, 2006 at 17:04
Rowan,
Oh, that’s just bad…
Müfit,
That’s a weird looking smiley.
July 28th, 2007 at 23:22
(s)
moahaha!
March 17th, 2009 at 20:57
i like my smilies 2 have a pimple like this…
:-.) lol!
!
March 18th, 2009 at 8:26
michael,
Ha ha! The Cindy Crawford-style!
March 18th, 2009 at 19:01
lol yeh
June 24th, 2009 at 16:41
ok…i prefer those noseless smiles
atd…
the nose is unnecessary there cause emotions are not expressed by nose but by eyes and mouth….but if someone insists on the nose thing so write it like this =o)…these are just cute
June 24th, 2009 at 16:58
michael,
Glad you agree!
globalsan,
Oh, but I’d like to disagree. The nose is an important part of how it is being perceived.
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