Smileys, also known as “emoticons,” are glyphs used to convey emotions in your writing. They are a great way to brighten up posts. 

Text smileys are created by typing two or more punctuation marks. Some examples are:

;-) is equivalent to 
:-) is equivalent to 
:-( is equivalent to 
:-? is equivalent to 

To learn more about emoticons and their history, see the Wikipedia entry on Emoticons.