An Emoticon in Typewriter Era

Koichi Yasuoka

The article shown right is from The Typewriter World (Chicago), Vol.I, No.2 (October 1897), p.46, which I found in The New York Public Library. You see the sentense "he Said it would Be a thxng of beavty & jOy FORever" is followed by a combination of punctuation marks, a semicolon and a right parenthesis, which is one of the so-called emoticons nowadays. I cannot make sure that it was really intended to represent a winking smile, but I need to check Berkshire News (Great Barrington, Massachusetts) of February 6, 1890. How do you think about this?