Prof Fahlman posted the ‘sideways smiley’ onto an online computer science ... extreme happiness. Japanese emoticons are called ‘kaomojis’ from ‘kao’ (meaning ‘face’) + moji.

Emoji date back to 1999 when they first appeared on Japanese cell ... with the advent of the computer. The first American Standard Code for Information Interchange emoticons, or ASCII for short ...

The most common emoji is the smiley face, much like Harvey Ball’s creation. “Emoji” is one of many words from Japanese. Here’s a sampling: tycoon, honcho, kudzu, skosh, ginkgo, haiku, futon, sudoku, ...