Bad spelling, incorrectness, as well as inelegance of expression in writing, ignorance of the simplest rules of punctuation … are far from rare among young men otherwise well prepared for college studies.

Young Theodore Roosevelt—a student at Harvard in the 1870s—was possibly among those young men being described. As historian Kathleen Dalton observed in her biography of Roosevelt, the future president would eventually support the revision of American English spelling rules, many of which we still use today, like changing -re endings to -er in words like center and changing -our to -or in words like color.

The emoticon: more than a face

Today, people are able to communicate rapidly through a range of mediums—and perhaps no linguistic development better indicates changes in the ways we communicate than the ubiquitous emoticon.

The emoticon :)—a colon followed by a parenthesis—is a visual representation of a smiley face turned sideways. Although an emoticon may look like a smile, a frown or any number of facial expressions, it doesn’t represent a face, as many internet users assume. It’s actually intended to convey a feeling (“I’m happy,” or “just joking”).

This meaning is evident even in the first emoticon, credited to Scott Fahlman at Carnegie Mellon University. In a 1982 e-mail, Fahlman suggested :-) as a “joke marker” to indicate wisecracks or sarcasm in text communication. In this legendary e-mail, he also used the first instance of the frown emoticon :-(.