Emoticons or smileys explained

An Emoticon (or Smiley) is a sequence of ordinary characters you can find on your computer keyboard. Emoticons are used in e-mail, chat, SMS and other forms of communication using computers. The most popular emoticons are the smiling faces (smileys or smilies) that people use to say "don't take what I just wrote too seriously". If you don't see that it represents a smiling face, tip your head to the left and look at it again. The colon represents the eyes, the dash represents the nose, and the right parenthesis represent the mouth.

Many people use MSN and Yahoo, for this reason I added a list with MSN and Yahoo emoticons. When using these during your chat session, they will be converted to real icons.

As Google also released a messenger (Google Talk) you find a link to download this messenger, however you need a G-mail address to use this.

In the Bonus MSN emoticons you will now find special emoticons related to the upcoming holidays!
These emoticons show an Emotion through an 'Icon'. Over hundreds of these Emoticons are being used. The most common and funny can be found here.