What are smileys?

Smileys (also known as emoticons) are a very popular method of communicating emotions and feelings. In a face-to-face talk it is easy to see if a person is serious about the topic of discussion or not.  Unfortunately, it is not so easy to do when reading a forum on the screen. Conveying emotions is however equally (or even more) important — imagine the consequences of offending an avatar
(real person's alter ego) on a forum you needed for your work only because he or she misunderstood your emotions.

Emoticons resemble miniature graphics symbols. They are "drawn" using special characters like
braces, colons, hyphens etc. The most important one is ":)" — the smiling face, which means that the person is not serious. Another variant is ";)" (mind the semicolon) — the person wants to be even less serious :). Obviously you can go to extremes like @–>– (did you notice a nice rose there?)