The use of emoticons, punctuation to depict a facial expression, is an essential part of the lexicon of the
Internet. Even if you don’t use emoticons, you probably know what they are-little strings of characters, when
looked at sideways, are like faces showing some emotion. For example, :-D means laughing, with eyes, a nose,
and a capital D for a wide, happy mouth.
All this is the result of a half-joking computer post put up by a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon
University on September 19, 1982. Scott Fahlman noticed that some of the jokes being sent around Carnegie
Mellon’s computer network were being taken seriously by a few people on campus. Someone who didn’t get the
joke might be upset by an all-in-fun comment and send out an angry response. This wasted a lot of people’s time.
Fahlman suggested the smiley as a solution. If you write something not to be taken seriously, he suggested, type :-)
after it. Some people took up his suggestion and it became part of the Internet shorthand at Carnegie
Mellon. The popularity of smiley turned out to be much more than Fahlman expected. Within a few months, it
soon spread via messages to other universities and companies.
No one really knows how many emoticons there are, but lists of 100 or so are common. The most popular
ones are actually turned into little pictures by word-processing or instant-messaging software. For
instance, :-( meaning sadness or disappointment becomes / on your computer screen. 【題組】78 Which of the following best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the second
paragraph?
(A)Many people at his university liked his suggestion.
(B)He was promoted to a better job because of his suggestion.
(C)His suggestion helped create the Internet at the university.
(D)His suggestion was shortened by the university faculty.