Kaomoji
Classic text emoticons you can type on any keyboard
Text emoticons are faces made from ordinary keyboard characters, like :) for a smile and :( for a frown. Most are read sideways: turn your head to the left and the colon becomes a pair of eyes. Every face below uses only keys found on a standard keyboard, so it displays correctly on any phone or computer. Tap one to copy it.
56 to copy · Updated 6 October 2026
Smiles and laughter · 9
Winks, tongues, kisses and hearts · 8
Sad, cross and unsure · 13
Upright faces · 14
Gestures, props and characters · 12
Ready-made lines for bios and captions
How to read a sideways face
Turn your head to the left and the characters stand up. The colon becomes the eyes, a closing bracket becomes the mouth, and a hyphen in between, if there is one, is the nose. Change one character and the mood changes with it: :) smiles, :( frowns, :| goes flat and :O drops its jaw. Swap the colon for a semicolon and one eye shuts, which is how ;) became a wink.
A few faces are written backwards and read from right to left: D: is the dismayed opposite of :D, and (: is a smile facing the other way. Upright faces such as ^_^ and T_T need no tilting at all. They follow the Japanese habit of showing the feeling through the eyes, but unlike most kaomoji they use nothing beyond the keyboard, so they never depend on a special font.
From a 1982 message board to messenger codes
In September 1982, on a computer science message board at Carnegie Mellon University, a researcher suggested marking jokes with :-) and serious posts with :-( because readers kept missing the humour. Both spread far beyond that board, and many people later dropped the nose.
Instant messengers such as MSN Messenger, popular in the late 1990s and 2000s, turned typed codes into small pictures, and a few faces still carry the meanings they had there: :$ for embarrassed, :@ for angry and (y) for a thumbs up. Facebook’s chat added hidden codes of its own, so <(") showed a penguin and :v a tiny Pac-Man. The :v has lived on as a jokey sign-off on meme pages, especially Spanish-language ones.
Which face for which message
| You want to say | Try | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Thanks, kindly meant | :) | The plainest smile. It softens a short reply without adding a mood of its own. |
| Only joking | ;) or :P | Both say “don’t take this seriously.” The wink can also read as flirty, so :P is safer with people you don’t know well. |
| That made me laugh | XD or :D | XD is the bigger laugh. Either feels livelier than “haha.” |
| Sorry to hear that | :( or :'( | The frown is gentle and the tear makes it heavier. Both suit small letdowns better than real bad news. |
| Wait, what? | o_O or D: | Confusion and mock horror, usually at something funny rather than something serious. |
| Love this | <3 | Warmer than a smile, and quieter than a row of heart emoji. |
| I’m done | -_- or x_x | Tired or fed up, usually about your own day rather than the person you are talking to. |
A lone :) at the end of a short answer can come across as cool, or even passive-aggressive, to some readers, just as the 🙂 emoji can. If a message might sound curt, a few extra words do more than a second face: “Sounds good, see you at six :)”.
When a typed face turns into something else
- Word and Outlook: AutoCorrect replaces :) with a ☺ taken from the Wingdings font. If the reader’s email app lacks that font, the smile arrives as a capital J. Press Ctrl+Z straight after the swap to keep your :).
- Microsoft Teams: many typed faces, :) and :( among them, become Teams’ own emoji as you type.
- iPhone: with Smart Punctuation on, two hyphens turn into one long dash, so the rose @}->-- loses part of its stem. Switch it off under Settings, General, Keyboard before typing the rose.
- Instagram: bios, captions and comments keep emoticons as plain text, so what you type is what people see.
Tip: To stop Word or Outlook swapping your smiles for good, open AutoCorrect Options (in Word it sits under File, Options, Proofing) and delete the :) entry.
Typing them quickly on a phone
The colon, semicolon and brackets sit on the first symbols page of both the iPhone keyboard and Gboard, so a sideways face takes two or three taps. Upright faces usually need the second page, where ^ lives. For longer ones, set up a shortcut: on an iPhone, Settings, General, Keyboard, Text Replacement can turn a code like zz1 into (-_-)zzz, and Gboard does the same from Settings, Dictionary, Personal dictionary. Gboard’s emoji panel also has a tab of ready-made text faces.
Questions people ask
Which way do you tilt your head to read :)?
To the left, so the colon ends up on top like a pair of eyes and the bracket sits underneath as the mouth. A handful of faces, such as D: and (:, are written the other way round, so tilt to the right for those.
What does XD mean?
It is a laughing face, not a word. The X is a pair of eyes squeezed shut and the D is a wide-open mouth, so XD means laughing hard. Lowercase xD means the same, and XP swaps the open mouth for a tongue.
What does :3 mean?
It draws a small, cat-like mouth and usually signals cute, content or a little cheeky. It is playful and mostly used between friends. Don’t confuse it with <3, where the angle bracket turns the 3 into the top of a heart.
Why did my :) turn into a J in an email?
Outlook and Word replace :) with a smiley from the Wingdings font. Email apps without Wingdings show the letter stored in the same slot, which is a capital J. To keep your smile, undo the swap right away or send the email as plain text.
Do people still use emoticons now that there are emoji?
Yes, mostly where a picture feels like too much: work chats, gaming, comment threads and plain-text email. Emoticons also look the same on every device, while each emoji is drawn differently by Apple, Google and Samsung, and some people simply like the retro feel.
Related pages
More symbols and text art
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