You’ve seen them everywhere. They linger in the corners of old IRC logs, flicker in the fast-paced chat of Twitch streams, and still pop up in your dad's emails. The smiley face with brackets is a survivor. Honestly, it’s kinda weird when you think about how much digital real estate we’ve given to yellow circles with realistic teardrops and 3D rendering. Yet, the humble combination of a colon and a closing parenthesis—the classic :)—refuses to die. It’s the cockroach of the internet. But a cute one.
Back in 1982, Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon, basically changed how we talk forever. He was tired of people misinterpreting jokes on the university bulletin boards. You know that feeling when you're being sarcastic and someone takes it literally? Yeah, that's been a problem since the Reagan administration. Fahlman suggested using :-) to mark jokes. He also suggested :-( for things that weren't jokes. He didn't realize he was launching a linguistic revolution that would eventually lead to a movie about emojis starring T.J. Miller. Life is strange like that.
Why We Still Use the Smiley Face With Brackets
Modern emojis are expressive, sure. But they’re also loud. Sometimes they’re too much. When you send a standard smiley face with brackets, you’re being subtle. It’s low-key. It doesn't scream "I AM HAPPY" in 4K resolution; it just nudges the reader. It says, "We're good," or "I'm just kidding."
There is a psychological weight to the text-based version that the graphic version lacks. Research in Computers in Human Behavior has actually looked into how we process these symbols. Because they require a bit of "mental rotation"—you have to tilt your head to see it—the brain treats them more like a linguistic marker than a picture. It’s built into the flow of the sentence.
Take the difference between these two:
- I'll be there soon :)
- I'll be there soon 😊
The second one feels more intense. It’s a performance of happiness. The first one? That's just a friendly sign-off. It’s efficient. It’s the "jeans and a t-shirt" of the digital world. People use it because it’s fast. You don’t have to scroll through five pages of food icons and flags to find the "correct" smile. You just hit two keys. Done.
The Evolution of the Bracket Smile
We didn't just stop at the basic colon-parenthesis. People got creative. The smiley face with brackets evolved into a thousand different subspecies. You have the "nose" debate—the people who use :-) versus the people who use :). The "nose-havers" are usually older. It’s a generational marker. Then you have the Russian style. If you ever play a game like Dota 2 or Counter-Strike on a European server, you’ll see people typing just a parenthesis. No eyes. Just ). It looks like a typo to Americans, but in Slavic regions, the more brackets you add, the happier you are))). It’s a fascinatng bit of regional shorthand.
Then there’s the "Eastern" style or Kaomoji. These don't require you to tilt your head. Think of (^_^) or (t_t). These use the brackets as a literal frame for the face. They use underscores for mouths and carats for eyes. This style took off on Japanese forums like 2channel and eventually merged with Western internet culture. It’s a whole different vibe. It’s more "anime." It’s more expressive without being as "corporate" as a standard Apple emoji.
The Professionalism Paradox
Is it okay to use a smiley face with brackets at work? Ten years ago, the answer was a hard no. It was seen as "unprofessional" or "immature." Today? It’s almost necessary. In a world of Slack and Microsoft Teams, a sentence without a smiley can sound aggressive.
"Please send the report" sounds like a demand.
"Please send the report :)" sounds like a request.
It’s about tone policing yourself. We use these brackets to soften the blow of digital text. Text is cold. It lacks the prosody of human speech—the pitch, the pauses, the warmth. The bracket smile fills that void. However, there's a limit. If you’re delivering bad news, like a layoff or a massive project failure, adding a :) is basically sociopathic. Context is everything.
Technical Limitations and the Birth of Emojis
Before we had the high-res icons we have now, we had ASCII art. The smiley face with brackets is essentially the smallest possible piece of ASCII art. When Shigetaka Kurita created the first set of 176 emojis for the Japanese mobile carrier DOCOMO in 1999, he was trying to solve the same problem Fahlman was. But he had a 12x12 pixel grid to work with.
The transition from text smilies to graphic emojis was actually quite controversial in niche circles. Some people felt it took the "soul" out of the interaction. They felt the abstraction of :) allowed for more personal interpretation. A yellow face is a specific thing. A colon and a bracket can be whatever you need them to be.
Cultural Nuance and Misunderstandings
Not every culture sees the smiley face with brackets the same way. In some East Asian cultures, the focus is on the eyes, not the mouth. This is why Western smilies like :) emphasize the mouth (the bracket), while Eastern smilies like ^_^ emphasize the eyes.
There's actually a study by Masaki Yuki from 2007 that showed Americans look to the mouth for emotional cues, while Japanese people look to the eyes. This is why our text-based smilies look so different. If you use :) with someone who primarily uses Kaomoji, they might think it looks a bit "stiff." It’s a subtle cultural gap that exists right there on your keyboard.
Also, we have to talk about the "passive-aggressive" smiley. You know the one.
"As per my last email :)"
That bracket isn't a smile. It’s a dagger. It’s the digital equivalent of "Bless your heart." Because the smiley face with brackets is so simple, it’s incredibly easy to weaponize. It’s the ultimate "I’m being polite but I’m actually very annoyed" symbol.
How to Use the Bracket Smiley Today
If you want to use the smiley face with brackets without looking like you’re stuck in 2004, keep it simple.
👉 See also: Pangrams: Why Sentences Using All Letters of the Alphabet Still Rule Design
- Avoid the nose. Unless you're over 50, the :-) feels a bit dated. The minimalist :) is the current standard.
- Don't overdo it. One is a greeting. Three in a row is a cry for help.
- Know your audience. In a high-stakes legal document? Probably skip it. In a quick Discord message to a friend? It's perfect.
- Mix it up. Sometimes a bracket smile works where a "Sweat Smile" emoji 😅 feels too desperate.
The reality is that text-based communication is hard. We weren't built to talk to each other through glowing rectangles. We were built to see faces and hear voices. The smiley face with brackets is just our way of trying to hack our own biology. It’s a tiny bit of humanity injected into a string of binary code.
It’s also surprisingly durable. While emoji designs change every year—Apple adds more skin tones, different hair textures, and new objects—the colon and bracket stay the same. They are platform-agnostic. They look the same on an iPhone as they do on a Linux terminal. They are the universal language of the web.
Actionable Tips for Better Digital Tone
If you’re worried about how you’re coming across, stop overthinking the emoji keyboard. Use the smiley face with brackets when you want to be clear but not "extra."
- Check your "dot" usage. Ending a short message with a period and no smiley can feel very "final" or angry to younger generations. If you want to seem approachable, swap that period for a :).
- Mirror the other person. If they use brackets, you use brackets. If they use the "Skull" emoji for everything, maybe stick to that. It’s called linguistic mirroring, and it helps build rapport.
- Use them to end the conversation. A :) is a great way to signal that a thread is finished without being rude. It’s a "soft" sign-off.
Ultimately, the smiley face with brackets isn't going anywhere. It’s survived the era of pagers, the rise of the smartphone, and the explosion of social media. It’s a classic for a reason. It’s simple, it’s effective, and it gets the job done without any unnecessary fluff.
Next time you’re typing out a message and you feel like you sound a bit too dry, just drop a bracket in there. It’s the oldest trick in the book, and honestly, it still works better than almost anything else. Keep your communication clear and keep it human. That’s the whole point of the internet anyway, right? Basically. Sorta. :)