The next time you comment on a friend's Facebook post, you can include emoticons — those old-school icons that appear when you type a prescribed set of characters such as :-).

Those who logged into Facebook recently might have noticed some new faces—emoticons that users can now tack on to their status updates. These emoticons are highly engineered: Facebook teamed up ...

Emoticons and symbols aren’t ruining language – they’re revolutionizing it Published: April 6, 2015 6:15am EDT. Lauren B. Collister, University of Pittsburgh. Author.