Emoticons from Kurjer Warszawski (5 March 1881) that depict joy, melancholy, indifference and astonishment just like these emoticons did a few weeks later.
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Emoticons from 1893, published in the German Kreisblatt für den Kreis Malmedy. h/t Gleb Albert.
Possibly an example of a smiley from 1862: “(applause and laughter ;)”. From a transcript in the New York Times of an Abraham Lincoln speech.
Leetspeak and possible emoticons from 1890. Found by Koichi Yasuoka, who writes:
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?
These proto-emoticons were published in the satirical magazine Puck on 30 March, 1881. Although often described as the first emoticons, they seem to be a rip-off of a Polish magazine from just a few weeks earlier.
Read more or see more emoticons from the 1800’s.
Post updated in 2024.