Emoticons in 1881 according to the QI Elves

[Jonathan Lighter]

Puck's are more like quasi-proto-emoticons.

The value of emoticons is that they can be appended to sentences.  These
pictures are clearly presented not as aids to communicating but simply as
cartoons that out-cartoon those of actual cartoonists.

Too big, too clumsy, too far beyond the capabilities of any contemporaneous
typewriter, and not even claimed to be useful.

Ambrose Bierce deserves credit for publicizing the bare principle of the
emoticon. But not even his single, limited specimen lent itself to the
non-typographer. I can't even make it with my super-futuristic computer
keyboard today.


JL

On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Ben Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Emoticons in 1881 according to the QI Elves
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 8:43 AM, ADSGarson O'Toole wrote:
> >
> > The QI Elves @qikipedia
> > In 1881, US humour magazine Puck published the world's first
> > emoticons. http://pic.twitter.com/G4z9ZpFEuZ
> > 9:33 a.m. - Mar 5, 2013
>
> For Puck's "Typographical Art" and other proto-emoticons, see:
>
>
> http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/emoticons-at-30-or-is-it-45-or-125-or-131/
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
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