From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or ...

Happy birthday to the emoticon -- the sideways smiley-face that changed the way we communicate emotion online.Consisting of three keyboard strokes (colon, hyphen, close parentheses), the popular ...

The smiley face emoticon is one of the greatest things invented in Pennsylvania. The punctuation marks created an icon to depict emotion, later transforming into more complex pictures and making way ...

After trialling the use of emoticons and tags for posts with a small group of American users, the use of the tags has been rolled out to more users in the US. According to TechCrunch, the tagging ...

Stay on top of what’s happening in the Bay Area with essential Bay Area news stories, sent to your inbox every weekday. The Bay Bay Area-raised host Ericka Cruz Guevarra brings you context and ...

The smiley face emoticon, which is an integral part of the SMS generation's life, has turned 30. The computer symbol for "not serious" or now more generally "happiness", made up of a colon, dash and a ...

Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal "smiley ...

‘Hi there! Happy face. Great to see you again. Wink. Oh, you can’t meet me later? Frown.’ Surely only a planet full of absolute cretins would communicate this way with one another? Well then, welcome ...

When computer science professor Scott Fahlman posted a sideways smiley face on an electronic message board at Carnegie Mellon University in 1982, he could not possibly have known that combination of ...

Owen Churches does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...