A joke license plate that wasn't actually meant to be taken seriously? Sounds a bit weird, but it is the beginning of the history of the digital smiley. The smiling face lying on its side began its triumphal march around the digital world 40 years ago on Monday (September 19) from a US university. Since then, it has become an integral part of text messages, usually in the form of a ready-made mini-image.

Emojis - drawn faces, hand signs, hearts and so on - play an important role in typed communication. "They give an indication of how an utterance should be understood," says linguist Erika Linz from the University of Bonn, who studies language and communication in digital media. Text messages lack the elements that make it clear what someone means in a conversation: voice and tone of voice as well as facial expressions and gestures.

Symbols to prevent misunderstandings

Symbols to avoid misunderstandings in digital conversations - this is exactly what the typed laughing face of American computer science professor Scott E. Fahlman should be. In 1982, computer scientists at his university in Pittsburgh sent messages to each other via Arpanet (the precursor to the internet) and posted them on digital pinboards.

The community consisted exclusively of nerds with a penchant for sarcasm and weird humor, said Fahlman in an interview with the 'Frankfurter Rundschau' newspaper earlier this year. So a lot was posted that was intended as fun. But there was always someone "who didn't understand the intention and wrote back indignantly. This led to real word battles," says the computer scientist.

To avoid this, there was discussion about labeling jokes as such. Again, not entirely seriously. On September 19, 1982, Fahlman posted his suggestion: a combination of colon, minus and closed parenthesis, together with the instruction to read it sideways. He later explained that he only wanted to amuse the few people involved in the short term. But he obviously hit a digital communication nerve. The lying smiley spread from the university via the Arpanet - and ultimately worldwide via the Internet.

From symbol to accepted answer

In today's text messages, emojis take on other functions in addition to expressing how you want something to be understood. They regularly serve as punctuation marks, explains linguist Erika Linz. For example, if an emoji is typed instead of a period, "it takes on an expressive meaning". In addition, the small characters make communication more economical, says the linguist. For example: Thumbs up instead of a formulated answer.

If no picture is used, this can also be interpreted as a sign that someone really means what they are saying. People have an awareness of what kind of messages they should and should not use emojis in, says Linz. Her students recently analyzed how well-known personalities on Instagram use the little symbols. The result: actors and actresses use emojis in their posts significantly more often than politicians.

Emojis on the rise

So is it only serious without symbols? Linz says: "I believe that in the long term, this will move even more into formal communication. The triumph of emojis is unstoppable." However, even with the small symbols, misunderstandings cannot be completely stopped. Because not all emojis are completely unambiguous. And people use some of them in different contexts with different intentions. This is where Fahlman's lying laughing face comes into its own. It is almost impossible to cause major confusion or serious annoyance with them.