Emoticons
The word emoticon is a combination of the words emotion and icon. Emoticons are used to convey expression, bodily gestures or simple emotion behind statements that might otherwise be misinterpreted. When you speak to someone face to face, you have eye contact, body language, facial expressions and tone of voice to name but a few signs. Without emoticons in your instant messaging you are just writing plain text and the recipient has no idea if you are insulting them, being sarcastic or just being honest. From personal experience, this can leads to bad words being spoken, not good.
