The Fundamentals of Emotion Icons for MSN Messenger

Emotion icons for MSN Messenger (also called MSN emoticons) are short pieces of ASCII text that are translated by the MSN messenger software to images that depict the emotions that you are trying to convey.

Emotion icons for MSN messenger differ from your standard run of the mill emoticons in that most emoticons merely use the ASCII sequence as the picture.

Whereas the emotion icons for MSN messenger are actual graphics that the software inserts based on the text string.  This allows for emotion icons for MSN messenger to be much more complex than with other messenger or email services since arbitrary images can be used that are based on ASCII strings that bear no resemblance to the picture that will be sent. 

The most common emoticon is the simple smiley face which is simply a colon, a hyphen, and an open parenthesis.  When the MSN messenger software encounters this text string, it replaces the string with an image of a yellow smiling face.  Similarly, the frowning face is replaced by a yellow image of a face that is frowning.  Other common emotion icons for MSN Messenger include a crying face, a face sticking its tongue out, a face with glasses, and a surprised face.  Emotion icons for MSN messenger can also feature more abstract images such as a pair of kissing lips, a dog or cat head, a vampire bat, and other images.

Be careful when using emotion icons for MSN Messenger.  It is possible to be trying to communicate a statement when you accidentally type a text string that corresponds to one of the emotion icons for MSN Messenger.  One humorous incident that is often retold (no one is sure if it is actually a true story) is that an employee was communicating with his female boss about his 401(k) retirement account.  It just so happens that the text sequence (k) is one of the emotion icons for MSN Messenger that corresponds to an image, in this case a pair of red, puckered lips!