In the early days of email, people quickly discovered the limitations of a textual medium to convey very personal, emotional thoughts. To try to provide shortcuts to emotional language, smileys were born. Intended to be “read” sideways-on, they provided a substitute for facial expression, albeit in a very primitive fashion.
Emoticons or smileys express emotion:
Example 3.1. A few emoticons (or smileys)
:-) happy
:-( sad
;^) tongue-in-cheek
:-P tongue sticking out
:-O surprised (open
mouthed)
%-\ a pretty bad hangover
There's a canonical list of well used smileys, and an exhaustive Emoji list of every possible combination of features.
Acronyms and abbreviations abound, particularly in chat programs and virtual worlds. Here are a few...
Example 3.2. Commonly used email abbreviations
LOL laughs out loud
IMHO in my humble opinion
BTW by the way
RTFM read the flippin'
manual!
<g> grin
There are a number of lists of these acronyms and abbreviations, such as the one at NetLingo, and there's even an acronym server