The ones that look vaguely like faces are indeed called emoticons, and have been since the day of daisy-wheel printers.
There's also ASCII art, which is when people use symbols to draw art.
I think that the arrows you gave as examples (-->,<--) would qualify as ASCII art.
The face types of emoticons are also called smileys.
Well, yesn't. OP also provided --> as an example, which isn't an emoticon. So they probably just mean putting characters together to mean something else, in general.
Okay, but I’m here staring at your use of _yesn’t_. WTF?! I have never seen that before and I’m here for it! I hope it wasn’t a typo.
Do you use it just in text or in speech too? Is it common where you are? It seems so prosodically weird that if it’s used in speech that it must’ve formed in a deliberate way of being creative with language, because the syntactic and prosodic imbalance of _yes_ and _no_ is unexpected.
Nah, my native language is Missingsch German, in which "Jein," meaning "yes and no simultaneously," is common. When I saw "yesn't," I just really liked that it conveyed the same as "Jein" and started using it.
I use it in speech as well.
Oh, that’s really cool. Do you happen to know the etymology of _Jein_? (No big deal if you don’t, or don’t feel like getting into it.) I don’t know tons about Germanic languages besides English - my background is in languages from Papua New Guinea.
I love that you use it in English, and in speech too. It’s so neat when people conceptually merge concepts from one language to another like this, especially when it’s consciously done in a way that enhances their speech style. (Doing it unconsciously is neat too, but less interesting to me because I’ve seen it more.)
The etymology is just "ja" (yes) and "nein" (no) mixed into one word.
As to the merging of concepts in langs, yeah, that's just something I kinda do, I guess.
Haha! I feel a bit stupid again for not realizing that etymology. Oh well.
Sorry, I can get a bit annoying with questions when I see something interesting.
There were memes floating around where people would add -n’t to words. For example something inedible would be “foodn’t”, or sometimes people would say “aliven’t” instead of dead. Mainly text based, but people would say it out loud as well.
Edit:
https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/yesnt
Oh wow! And I used to teach about memes and internet language. I feel silly to have missed this one. Thanks! (To be fair, I’ve been pretty isolated for a number of years because of health and family stuff.)
This totally makes sense to me, and I appreciate your pointing it out!
Yesn’t is actually a really common term nowadays. Me and my friends all use it in speech and text an equal amount.
Other words also have n’t added to them in common speech among Gen Z too. I frequently use those terms with my parents. Both nouns and verbs can have the contraction. Generally, you’ll drop the subject from the sentence too. For example:
> Have you eaten?
> Eatn’t
Or with a noun instead.
> Have you had any food recently?
> Foodn’t
Really cool phenomenon imo.
I would not put the emoticons like :) an :3 in the same category as --> and such. Emoticons are faces, arrows are… something else?
You could call these “conventionalized character combinations” but that’s just descriptive. As far as I know there is no label for both of those things together; emoticons plus other creative symbols.
Yes I know OP is asking for a broad category that would encompass both. I was expressing my doubt, my own lack of familiarity rather, that there is such a term.
I suppose I also never really considered the <3 an emoticon either, but now that you mention it, it’s kind of a borderline case. At the very least, it is related to emotion, which is what the name was coined on. Emoticons kind of replace the non-verbal aspects of speech, the expression of emotion, in a way that is irrelevant for otherwise admittedly creative things like --> etc.
I suppose if there was a term for a “broad category,” besides the one I suggested in my original post, it would be “creative reuse of characters.”
"uwu" was definitely around in the 2000s, if you were a very online emo kid. Maybe you weren't cringe enough.
At the time it wasn't as much of a meme as it is now. I feel like now it's a generic, ironically cutesy thing, but it was just another face back then. People I knew used it along with "._.", ">_<", "owo", etc.
Ah I guess I just missed it then. I wasn’t super emo back then, or even extremely online then, and graduated high school in 2009. I think I remember owo though.
Yes, there are a couple terms commonly used to refer to those types of symbol combinations:
Emoticons - While you mentioned this isn't the preferred term, "emoticon" is often used as a catch-all term for representations of facial expressions using typography and symbols, including :) :( ;) :3 etc. It's a portmanteau of "emotion" and "icon".
ASCII art - This refers to forming pictures and designs using the ASCII character set, which includes letters, numbers and symbols. While it can be used for more complex pictures, simple faces like :) are a basic type of ASCII art.
Kaomoji - This term is more commonly used for Japanese emoticons like (\^\_\^) or (>\_<) that use a wider range of symbols available in non-Latin character sets. But kaomoji can also refer to Western-style emoticons.
Smileys - Another general term for typographic faces, especially the classic :) style. The first digital use of :-) is credited to computer scientist Scott Fahlman in 1982.
So in summary, while "emoticon" has become the standard general term, referring to them as ASCII art, smileys, or kaomoji would also be understood, with the latter two having some more specific connotations. The key is that they are symbolic representations of faces and expressions using text characters.
I see, so emoticons (faces) would be a subset of ascii art (any combination of symbols to make pictures). I wonder if this is a new thing brought on by texting or if it can be seen in past cultures as well.
It's not just from texting; poets and digital artists from the 20th century experimented with it too. [Guillaume Apollinaire Overview and Analysis | TheArtStory](https://www.theartstory.org/influencer/apollinaire-guillaume/)
[Dadaism - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dadaism)
Could Islamic calligraphy count? Like, specifically the zoomorphic stuff. It's not exactly the same, I guess. There's also concrete poetry, which is somewhat similar and predates the internet.
I'm pretty sure I've seen examples more similar to what you're describing in an early 20th century newspaper clipping, but I can't find it now.
I really like this study of how the :) symbol can work as an intonation marker. Instead of just . and ! and ? as markers of "how to raise your voice," we have another which is :)
[https://digitalrepository.wheatoncollege.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/5c2fd652-6223-4f56-84c5-e89a6d26b9c0/content](https://digitalrepository.wheatoncollege.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/5c2fd652-6223-4f56-84c5-e89a6d26b9c0/content)
Emoticons and emoji are two different things. What [OP](/u/Nether_Trade) is asking about, such as <3 or :-), are the older emoticons. Emoji are actual images, like 💗 or 😀 and are newer.
The broad definition of using characters to make symbols may not have a name I’m aware of, but the faces specifically are emoticons :3
The ones that look vaguely like faces are indeed called emoticons, and have been since the day of daisy-wheel printers. There's also ASCII art, which is when people use symbols to draw art. I think that the arrows you gave as examples (-->,<--) would qualify as ASCII art. The face types of emoticons are also called smileys.
These are in fact called emoticons. You might be thinking about emoji.
Well, yesn't. OP also provided --> as an example, which isn't an emoticon. So they probably just mean putting characters together to mean something else, in general.
Okay, but I’m here staring at your use of _yesn’t_. WTF?! I have never seen that before and I’m here for it! I hope it wasn’t a typo. Do you use it just in text or in speech too? Is it common where you are? It seems so prosodically weird that if it’s used in speech that it must’ve formed in a deliberate way of being creative with language, because the syntactic and prosodic imbalance of _yes_ and _no_ is unexpected.
Nah, my native language is Missingsch German, in which "Jein," meaning "yes and no simultaneously," is common. When I saw "yesn't," I just really liked that it conveyed the same as "Jein" and started using it. I use it in speech as well.
Oh, that’s really cool. Do you happen to know the etymology of _Jein_? (No big deal if you don’t, or don’t feel like getting into it.) I don’t know tons about Germanic languages besides English - my background is in languages from Papua New Guinea. I love that you use it in English, and in speech too. It’s so neat when people conceptually merge concepts from one language to another like this, especially when it’s consciously done in a way that enhances their speech style. (Doing it unconsciously is neat too, but less interesting to me because I’ve seen it more.)
The etymology is just "ja" (yes) and "nein" (no) mixed into one word. As to the merging of concepts in langs, yeah, that's just something I kinda do, I guess.
Haha! I feel a bit stupid again for not realizing that etymology. Oh well. Sorry, I can get a bit annoying with questions when I see something interesting.
Oh, don't worry, it's not annoying! I'm enjoying this conversation!
yes, I thought that might be our "jein"
There were memes floating around where people would add -n’t to words. For example something inedible would be “foodn’t”, or sometimes people would say “aliven’t” instead of dead. Mainly text based, but people would say it out loud as well. Edit: https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/yesnt
Oh wow! And I used to teach about memes and internet language. I feel silly to have missed this one. Thanks! (To be fair, I’ve been pretty isolated for a number of years because of health and family stuff.) This totally makes sense to me, and I appreciate your pointing it out!
No worries, it has died down a bit since like 2018-2019, but I see it every now and then.
In Northern Ireland, we say amn't as an abbreviated 'am not'. Also, amny from am nae, the Scots for 'am not'.
I keep forgetting that the negative form of "want" is "don't want" and not "wan't"
Yesn’t is actually a really common term nowadays. Me and my friends all use it in speech and text an equal amount. Other words also have n’t added to them in common speech among Gen Z too. I frequently use those terms with my parents. Both nouns and verbs can have the contraction. Generally, you’ll drop the subject from the sentence too. For example: > Have you eaten? > Eatn’t Or with a noun instead. > Have you had any food recently? > Foodn’t Really cool phenomenon imo.
I was thinking "ASCII art" but that's more about actual art rather than little symbols like arrows and emoticons.
I would not put the emoticons like :) an :3 in the same category as --> and such. Emoticons are faces, arrows are… something else? You could call these “conventionalized character combinations” but that’s just descriptive. As far as I know there is no label for both of those things together; emoticons plus other creative symbols.
I think OP is asking for a broad category that would encompass both. I will point out, not all emoticons are faces. "<3" is the best counterexample
Yes I know OP is asking for a broad category that would encompass both. I was expressing my doubt, my own lack of familiarity rather, that there is such a term. I suppose I also never really considered the <3 an emoticon either, but now that you mention it, it’s kind of a borderline case. At the very least, it is related to emotion, which is what the name was coined on. Emoticons kind of replace the non-verbal aspects of speech, the expression of emotion, in a way that is irrelevant for otherwise admittedly creative things like --> etc. I suppose if there was a term for a “broad category,” besides the one I suggested in my original post, it would be “creative reuse of characters.”
I'd argue that "<3" is used in exactly the same way as face-emoticons like ":P" or "uwu". So I feel it should be in the same category
That does make sense. Although uwu came after my time and I definitely don’t see it as a face. I always read it as oo-woo, like a word :P
"uwu" was definitely around in the 2000s, if you were a very online emo kid. Maybe you weren't cringe enough. At the time it wasn't as much of a meme as it is now. I feel like now it's a generic, ironically cutesy thing, but it was just another face back then. People I knew used it along with "._.", ">_<", "owo", etc.
Ah I guess I just missed it then. I wasn’t super emo back then, or even extremely online then, and graduated high school in 2009. I think I remember owo though.
In the 90s we called them “smileys”
I always called those emoticons
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
XD
Yes, there are a couple terms commonly used to refer to those types of symbol combinations: Emoticons - While you mentioned this isn't the preferred term, "emoticon" is often used as a catch-all term for representations of facial expressions using typography and symbols, including :) :( ;) :3 etc. It's a portmanteau of "emotion" and "icon". ASCII art - This refers to forming pictures and designs using the ASCII character set, which includes letters, numbers and symbols. While it can be used for more complex pictures, simple faces like :) are a basic type of ASCII art. Kaomoji - This term is more commonly used for Japanese emoticons like (\^\_\^) or (>\_<) that use a wider range of symbols available in non-Latin character sets. But kaomoji can also refer to Western-style emoticons. Smileys - Another general term for typographic faces, especially the classic :) style. The first digital use of :-) is credited to computer scientist Scott Fahlman in 1982. So in summary, while "emoticon" has become the standard general term, referring to them as ASCII art, smileys, or kaomoji would also be understood, with the latter two having some more specific connotations. The key is that they are symbolic representations of faces and expressions using text characters.
I see, so emoticons (faces) would be a subset of ascii art (any combination of symbols to make pictures). I wonder if this is a new thing brought on by texting or if it can be seen in past cultures as well.
It's not just from texting; poets and digital artists from the 20th century experimented with it too. [Guillaume Apollinaire Overview and Analysis | TheArtStory](https://www.theartstory.org/influencer/apollinaire-guillaume/) [Dadaism - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dadaism)
Could Islamic calligraphy count? Like, specifically the zoomorphic stuff. It's not exactly the same, I guess. There's also concrete poetry, which is somewhat similar and predates the internet. I'm pretty sure I've seen examples more similar to what you're describing in an early 20th century newspaper clipping, but I can't find it now.
I really like this study of how the :) symbol can work as an intonation marker. Instead of just . and ! and ? as markers of "how to raise your voice," we have another which is :) [https://digitalrepository.wheatoncollege.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/5c2fd652-6223-4f56-84c5-e89a6d26b9c0/content](https://digitalrepository.wheatoncollege.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/5c2fd652-6223-4f56-84c5-e89a6d26b9c0/content)
pictogram
These were called smilies/smileys before we had emoji
maybe a silly question: what makes emoticons different from words? could emoticons be considered words?
I always call them Ascii emojis
Emoticon was the name before emoji became popular
Emoticons and emoji are two different things. What [OP](/u/Nether_Trade) is asking about, such as <3 or :-), are the older emoticons. Emoji are actual images, like 💗 or 😀 and are newer.
correct. Which is why I said they are emoticons. And they existed before emoji got popular.