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Smileys

When you're involved in an online discussion, you can't see the smiles or shrugs that the other person might make in a live conversation to show he's only kidding. But online, there's no body language. So what you might think is funny, somebody else might take as an insult. To try to keep such misunderstandings from erupting into bitter disputes, we have smileys. Tilt your head to the left and look at the following sideways. :-). Or simply :). This is your basic "smiley." Use it to indicate people should not take that comment you just made as seriously as they might otherwise. You make a smiley by typing a colon, a hyphen and a right parenthetical bracket. Some people prefer using the word "grin," usually in this form:

<grin>

Sometimes, though, you'll see it as *grin* or even just <g> for short. Some other smileys include:

;-)
Wink;

:-(
Frown;

:-O
Surprise;

8-)
Wearing glasses;

=|:-)=
Abe Lincoln.

OK, so maybe the last two are a little bogus :-), but for some really fancy ones, see section The Unofficial Smiley Dictionary.

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