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Emoticon is a combination of two words — emotion and icon– into one new word. Do you like to use emoticons in your email or text messages? If you do, you probably feel using emoticons is funny and sweet; if you don’t, then you must dislike them a lot, and call them annoying and childish? Personally, I think emoticons can bring some friendliness and warmth to the plain text and add the writing a bit human touch. However, if you put too much smileys or frown faces throughout your writing, then they would be too silly and make your writing look like a freaking emotional, sentimental piece?
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Learn Mandarin Chinese, how to say ” An emoticon looks like a human face made up of letters and punctuations.” 网路情绪符号看起来像一张人的脸，是由字母和标点符号构成的。wǎnglù qíngxù fúhào kàn qǐlái xiàng Yī zhāng rén de liǎn , shì yóu zìmǔ hé biāodiǎn fúhào gòuchéng de . wǎnglù (网路 noun, internet) qíngxù (情绪 noun, emotion) fúhào (符号 noun, symbol, mark or sign) kàn (看 verb, look) qǐlái (看起 qǐlái originally means stand up or get up, but 看起来 kàn qǐlái here means look like or look as if) xiàng ( 像 verb, to resemble) Yī ( 一number, one) zhāng ( 张 measure word for face) rén ( 人 noun, person or people) de ( 的 particle, to connect the attributive and the noun it modifies) liǎn ( 脸 noun, face) , shì ( 是 verb, is) yóu ( 由 preposition, from) zìmǔ ( 字母 noun, letters) hé ( 和 conjunction, and) biāodiǎn ( 标点 noun, punctuation) fúhào ( 符号 noun, mark or symbol) gòuchéng ( 构成 verb, to structure) de ( 的 particle, used at the end of a declarative sentence for emphasis) .

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An emoticon is a pictorial (绘 画 的 [huìhuà de]) representation (表 示 [biǎoshì ]) of a facial (面 部 or 脸 的 [miànbù or liǎn de]) expression (表 情 [biăoqíng] ) using punctuation (标 点 [biāodiăn] ) marks (记 号 [jìhao] ) and letters ( 字 母 [zìmŭ] ), and it is usually used in casual or humorous (有 幽 默 感 的 ［yǒu yōumògǎn de ］） writing （写 作 ［xiězuò ］） to express （ 表 达 [biăodá] ）a person’s mood （ 心 情 [xīnqíng] ）.

The first person has documented emoticon usage was Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. Fahlman first typed a colon （冒 号 [màohào] ）, hyphen （连 字 符 号 ［liánzìfúhào ］） and bracket （ 括 号 ［kuòhào ］） as a way of conveying emotional meaning in plain （简 单 的 [jiăndān de] ） text. The text （ 正 文 [zhèngwén] ） of his original （最 初 的 [zuìchū de] ）proposal, posted to the Carnegie Mellon University computer science general board on 19 September 1982, was thought to have been lost, but was recovered twenty years later. For his genius （ 天 才 [tiāncái] ）invention （发 明 [fāmíng] ）, Fahlman is now known as the “father of the smiley.”

East is east, and west is west, and never their emoticons should be the same.From the following comparison, we see the the eastern emoticons are more sophisticated and detailed than the western ones.

Western style

Happy or smiley :] (The ] should be ). I wanted to type ), however, if I type two dots and ), then it got changed to a smiley like this :); that is why I had to replace ) with ]. )
Sad or frown :[
wink ;]
shocked : o

Eastern style
Happy or smiley (^_^)
Sad or frown (T_T) tears dripping face
wink (^_~)
shocked (o_O)

Some said that using emoticon is girlish and it is just not a guy thing. What do you think? If you are already in work force, will you use emoticon in your business e-mails? Or you would just want to keep those emotion signs at bay to maintain an über professional expression? Is there a space for emoticon in business emails? Should you use emoticon in your resume? I would love to hear your opinion about this.

List of names of Chinese punctuation marks ( 标点符号 biāodiǎn fúhào ) with pinyin and English translation:

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1 Period: 句号 (jù hào) – 。
2 Comma: 逗号 (dòu hào) － ，
3 Enumeration Comma: 顿号 (dùn hào)－ 、
4 Colon: 冒号 (mào hào) － ：
5 Semicolon – 分号 (fēnhào) – ；
6 Question Mark – 问号 (wènhào) – ？
7 Exclamation Mark – 惊叹号 (jīng tàn hào) – ！
8 Quotation marks － 引号 (yǐn hào) “ ”
9 Bracket 括 号 （kuòhào）－ ［ ］

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