Jazz Up Your E-mails With A Few Simple Keystrokes

Want to add some flair and emphasis to your e-mails? Next time you compose an e-mail include what are known as emoticons or smileys. In plain English that just means combining common symbols on your keyboard so they look like the expressions of a human face. For example, to make a basic smiley face you would type a colon, a hyphen and the right half of a parenthesis, exactly in that order, so it would look like this:

:-)

See...doesn't that look like a smiling human face?

Here's a list of some popular emoticons and what they communicate to your readers when you include them in an e-mail:

:-)

A smile tells them you're happy.

:-(

A frown lets them know you're unhappy.

>:-(

This tells them your not just unhappy, you're downright angry!

:-o

Here, you're letting them know how shocked or surprised you feel.

And there are many, many more! In fact, if you want to dig deeper and get a better idea of just how many of these you can create with your keyboard, try going to any search engine and type in either "list of emoticons" or "list of smileys" and you'll find plenty of sites to satisfy your curiosity :-)