Japanese Style
Users from Japan popularized a style of emoticons that can be understood without tilting one's head to the left. This style arose on ASCII NET of Japan in 1986. Similar looking emoticons were used by Byte Information Exchange (BIX) around the same time.
These emoticons are usually found in a format similar to (*_*). The asterisks indicate the eyes; the central character, commonly an underscore, the mouth; and the parentheses, the outline of the face.
Different emotions such as (")(-_-)("), are expressed by changing the character representing the eyes, for example "T" can be used to express crying or sadness (T_T). T_T may also be used as meaning 'unimpressed'. The emphasis on the eyes is reflected in the common usage of emoticons that use only the eyes, e.g. ^^. Looks of stress are represented by the likes of (x_x) while (-_-;) is a generic emoticon for nervousness, the semicolon indicating sweat that occurs during anxiety. Repeating the /// mark can indicate embarrassment by symbolizing blushing. Characters like hyphens or periods can replace the underscore; the period is often used for a smaller, "cuter" mouth or to represent a nose, e.g. (^.^). Alternatively, the mouth/nose can be left out entirely, e.g. (^^). The parentheses also can often be replaced with braces, e.g. {^_^}. Many times, the parentheses are left out completely, e.g. ^^, >.<, o_O, O.O, e_e and/or e.e. A quotation mark ", apostrophe ', or semicolon ; can be added to the emoticon to imply apprehension or embarrassment, in the same way that a sweat drop is used in popular and common Asian animation.
Microsoft IME 2000 (Japanese) or later supports the use of both forms of emoticons by enabling Microsoft IME Spoken Language/Emotion Dictionary. In IME 2007, it was moved to Emoticons dictionary.
Further variations of emoticons may be produced by using combining characters, e.g. ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶ and ᶘᵒᴥᵒᶅ.
Read more about this topic: List Of Online Emotions
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