When you're typing, people can't see your face or hear your tone of voice. To help avoid insulting people, smileys or emoticons were first developed for use in the Usenet news groups. The original smiley ":-)" (read sideways) indicated "'I'm kidding" or "'I'm not serious" Of course, it wasn't long before two things happened: Lots of emoticons were invented. Lots of people thought they could get away with any obnoxious behavior by putting in a smiley. Let's face it folks. Neither I nor anyone else is going to forgive you if you call us an asshole and then put a smiley after it. The fact that you are not face-to-face does not excuse being obnoxious.

:-) 8-)	colon, dash, right paren eight, dash, right paren	smile smile (with glasses)
	The 8 can be used in place of the colon anywhere to indicate glasses.
;-)	semicolon, dash, right paren	wink
:-(	colon, dash, left paren	I'm sad
:-D	colon, dash, capital D	I'm laughing
:'-O	colon, apostrophe, dash, capital O	I'm crying
:-o :-O	colon, dash, small o colon, dash, capital O	I'm surprised I'm very surprised
:-()	colon, dash, left paren, right paren	Me and my big mouth

There are of course, many other emoticons, and some other interpretations of the ones given.

Some people prefer to be more explicit:

<grin>

<wink>

And some wise-guy professional writers like me usually use:

<smiley omitted for brevity>

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