E. E. Cummings
E. E. Cummings in 1953
Born	Edward Estlin Cummings (1894-10-14)October 14, 1894 Cambridge, Massachusetts
Died	September 3, 1962(1962-09-03) (aged 67) Joy Farm in North Conway, New Hampshire
Cause of death	Hemorrhage
Resting place	Forest Hills Cemetery
Known for	Poems, plays and other works of art
Influenced by	Amy Lowell, Gertrude Stein
Influenced	Richard Brautigan Brian P. Cleary
Religion	Unitarian
Spouse	Elaine Orr Anne Minnerly Barton Marion Morehouse
Children	Nancy, daughter with Elaine Orr
Parents	Edward Cummings Rebecca Haswell Clarke
Relatives	Elizabeth Cummings, sister

Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings (in the style of some of his poems—see name and capitalization, below), was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. His body of work encompasses approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays and several essays, as well as numerous drawings and paintings. He is remembered as a preeminent voice of 20th century poetry.

Life[link]

Born into a Unitarian family, Cummings exhibited transcendental leanings his entire life. As he grew in maturity and age, Cummings moved more toward an "I, Thou" relationship with God. His journals are replete with references to “le bon Dieu” as well as prayers for inspiration in his poetry and artwork (such as “Bon Dieu! may I some day do something truly great. amen.”). Cummings "also prayed for strength to be his essential self ('may I be I is the only prayer--not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong'), and for relief of spirit in times of depression ('almighty God! I thank thee for my soul; & may I never die spiritually into a mere mind through disease of loneliness')."^[1]

Cummings wanted to be a poet from childhood and wrote poetry daily aged eight to 22, exploring assorted forms. He went to Harvard and developed an interest in modern poetry which ignored conventional grammar and syntax, aiming for a dynamic use of language. On graduating he worked for a book dealer.^[2]

In 1917, with the first world war ongoing in Europe, Cummings enlisted in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with his college friend John Dos Passos. Due to an administrative mix-up, Cummings was not assigned to an ambulance unit for five weeks, during which time he stayed in Paris. He fell in love with the city, to which he would return throughout his life.^[3]

During their service in the ambulance corps, they sent letters home that drew the attention of the military censors, and were known to prefer the company of French soldiers over fellow ambulance drivers. The two openly expressed anti-war views; Cummings spoke of his lack of hatred for the Germans.^[4] On September 21, 1917, just five months after his belated assignment, he and a friend, William Slater Brown were arrested by the French military on suspicion of espionage and undesirable activities. They were held for 3½ months in a military detention camp at the Dépôt de Triage, in La Ferté-Macé, Orne, Normandy.^[3]

They were imprisoned with other detainees in a large room. Cummings' father failed to obtain his son's release through diplomatic channels and in December 1917 wrote a letter to President Wilson. Cummings was released on December 19, 1917, and Brown was released two months later. Cummings used his prison experience as the basis for his novel, The Enormous Room (1922) about which F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "Of all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives—The Enormous Room by e e cummings....Those few who cause books to live have not been able to endure the thought of its mortality."^[5]

Cummings returned to the United States on New Year's Day 1918. Later in 1918 he was drafted into the army. He served in the 12th Division at Camp Devens, Massachusetts, until November 1918.^[6][7]

       who used to
       ride a watersmooth-silver
                                 stallion

                                                 Jesus

                     and what i want to know is

Cummings returned to Paris in 1921 and remained there for two years before returning to New York. His collection Tulips and Chimneys came in 1923 and his inventive use of grammar and syntax is evident. The book was heavily cut by his editor. XLI Poems, was then published in 1925. With these collections Cummings made his reputation as an avant garde poet.^[2]

During the rest of the 1920s and 1930s Cummings returned to Paris a number of times, and traveled throughout Europe, meeting, among others, Pablo Picasso. In 1931 Cummings traveled to the Soviet Union, recounting his experiences in Eimi, published two years later. During these years Cummings also traveled to Northern Africa and Mexico and worked as an essayist and portrait artist for Vanity Fair magazine (1924 to 1927).

In 1926, Cummings' father was killed in a car accident. Though severely injured, Cummings' mother survived. Cummings detailed the accident in the following passage from his i: six nonlectures series given at Harvard (as part of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) in 1952–1953:

A locomotive cut the car in half, killing my father instantly. When two brakemen jumped from the halted train, they saw a woman standing - dazed but erect – beside a mangled machine; with blood spouting (as the older said to me) out of her head. One of her hands (the younger added) kept feeling her dress, as if trying to discover why it was wet. These men took my sixty-six year old mother by the arms and tried to lead her toward a nearby farmhouse; but she threw them off, strode straight to my father's body, and directed a group of scared spectators to cover him. When this had been done (and only then) she let them lead her away.

His father's death had a profound impact on Cummings, who entered a new period in his artistic life. Cummings began to focus on more important aspects of life in his poetry. He began this new period by paying homage to his father's memory in the poem "my father moved through dooms of love"^[8][9]

Final years[link]

Grave of E. E. Cummings

In 1952, his alma mater, Harvard University awarded Cummings an honorary seat as a guest professor. The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures he gave in 1952 and 1955 were later collected as i: six nonlectures.

Cummings spent the last decade of his life traveling, fulfilling speaking engagements, and spending time at his summer home, Joy Farm, in Silver Lake, New Hampshire.

He died of a stroke on September 3, 1962, at the age of 67 in North Conway, New Hampshire at the Memorial Hospital.^[10] His cremated remains were buried in Lot 748 Althaeas Path, in Section 6, Forest Hills Cemetery and Crematory in Boston. In 1969, his third wife, model and photographer Marion Morehouse Cummings, died and was buried in an adjoining plot.

Cummings' papers are held at the Houghton Library at Harvard University and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.^[3]

Personal life[link]

Marriages[link]

Sketched self-portrait circa 1920

Cummings was married briefly twice. Cummings' first marriage, to Elaine Orr, began as a love affair in 1918 while she was married to Scofield Thayer, one of Cummings' friends from Harvard. During this time he wrote a good deal of his erotic poetry.^[11] The affair produced a daughter, Nancy, born on December 20, 1919. Nancy was Cummings' only child. After divorcing Thayer, Elaine married Cummings on March 19, 1924. However, they separated after two months and divorced less than nine months later. Elaine left Cummings for a wealthy Irish banker, moved to Ireland, and took Nancy with her. Under the terms of the divorce Cummings was granted custody of Nancy for three months each year, but Elaine refused to abide by the agreement. Cummings did not see his daughter again until 1946.

He married his second wife Anne Minnerly Barton on May 1, 1929, and they separated three years later in 1932. That same year, Anne obtained a Mexican divorce that was not officially recognized in the United States until August 1934.

The year Cummings and Anne separated, he met Marion Morehouse, a fashion model and photographer. Although it is not clear whether the two were ever legally married, Morehouse lived with Cummings in a common-law marriage until his death in 1962. Morehouse died on May 18, 1969,^[12] while living at 4 Patchin Place, Greenwich Village, New York City, where Cummings had resided since September 8, 1924.^[13]

Political views[link]

According to his testimony in EIMI, Cummings had little interest in politics until his trip to the Soviet Union in 1931^[14], after which he shifted rightward on many political and social issues.^[15] Despite his radical and bohemian public image, he was a Republican and, later, an ardent supporter of Joseph McCarthy.^[16]

Work[link]

Poetry[link]

Despite Cummings' consanguinity with avant-garde styles, much of his work is quite traditional. Many of his poems are sonnets, albeit often with a modern twist, and he occasionally made use of the blues form and acrostics. Cummings' poetry often deals with themes of love and nature, as well as the relationship of the individual to the masses and to the world. His poems are also often rife with satire.

While his poetic forms and themes share an affinity with the romantic tradition, Cummings' work universally shows a particular idiosyncrasy of syntax, or way of arranging individual words into larger phrases and sentences. Many of his most striking poems do not involve any typographical or punctuation innovations at all, but purely syntactic ones.

                                           i fear

As well as being influenced by notable modernists including Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, Cummings' early work drew upon the imagist experiments of Amy Lowell. Later, his visits to Paris exposed him to Dada and surrealism, which in turn permeated his work. He began to rely on symbolism and allegory where he once used simile and metaphor. In his later work, he rarely used comparisons that required objects that were not previously mentioned in the poem, choosing to use a symbol instead. Due to this, his later poetry is “frequently more lucid, more moving, and more profound than his earlier.” ^[18] Cummings also liked to incorporate imagery of nature and death into much of his poetry.

While some of his poetry is free verse (with no concern for rhyme or meter), many have a recognizable sonnet structure of 14 lines, with an intricate rhyme scheme. A number of his poems feature a typographically exuberant style, with words, parts of words, or punctuation symbols scattered across the page, often making little sense until read aloud, at which point the meaning and emotion become clear. Cummings, who was also a painter, understood the importance of presentation, and used typography to "paint a picture" with some of his poems.^[19]

The seeds of Cummings' unconventional style appear well established even in his earliest work. At age six, he wrote to his father:

FATHER DEAR. BE, YOUR FATHER-GOOD AND GOOD,
HE IS GOOD NOW, IT IS NOT GOOD TO SEE IT RAIN,
FATHER DEAR IS, IT, DEAR, NO FATHER DEAR,
LOVE, YOU DEAR,
ESTLIN. ^[20]

Following his autobiographical novel The Enormous Room, Cummings' first published work was a collection of poems entitled Tulips and Chimneys (1923). This work was the public's first encounter with his characteristic eccentric use of grammar and punctuation.

Some of Cummings' most famous poems do not involve much, if any, odd typography or punctuation, but still carry his unmistakable style, particularly in unusual and impressionistic word order.

Cummings' work often does not act in accordance with the conventional combinatorial rules that generate typical English sentences (for example, "they sowed their isn't"). His readings of Stein in the early part of the century probably served as a springboard to this aspect of his artistic development.^{[citation needed]} In some respects, Cummings' work is more stylistically continuous with Stein's than with any other poet or writer.^{[citation needed]}

In addition, a number of Cummings' poems feature, in part or in whole, intentional misspellings, and several incorporate phonetic spellings intended to represent particular dialects. Cummings also made use of inventive formations of compound words, as in "in Just"^[22] which features words such as "mud-luscious", "puddle-wonderful", and "eddieandbill." This poem is part of a sequence of poems entitled Chansons Innocentes;^[23] it has many references comparing the "balloonman" to Pan, the mythical creature that is half-goat and half-man. Literary critic R.P. Blackmur has commented that this usage of language is “frequently unintelligible because he disregards the historical accumulation of meaning in words in favour of merely private and personal associations.” ^[24]

Many of Cummings' poems are satirical and address social issues ^[25] but have an equal or even stronger bias toward romanticism: time and again his poems celebrate love, sex, and the season of rebirth.^[26]

Cummings also wrote children's books and novels. A notable example of his versatility is an introduction he wrote for a collection of the comic strip Krazy Kat.

Controversy[link]

Cummings is also known for controversial subject matter, as he has a large collection of erotic poetry. In his 1950 collection Xaipe: Seventy-One Poems, Cummings published two poems containing words that caused an outrage in some quarters.^[27]

<poem>

one day a nigger

caught in his hand

a little star no bigger

than not to understand

"i'll never let you go

until you've made me white"

so she did and now

stars shine at night.^[28]

</poem>

and

<poem>

a kike is the most dangerous

machine as yet invented

by even yankee ingenu

ity(out of a jew a few

dead dollars and some twisted laws)

it comes both prigged and canted ^[28]

</poem>

Cummings biographer Catherine Reef notes of the incident:

Friends begged Cummings to reconsider publishing these poems, and the book's editor pleaded with him to withdraw them, but he insisted that they stay. All the fuss perplexed him. The poems were commenting on prejudice, he pointed out, and not condoning it. He intended to show how derogatory words cause people to see others in terms of stereotypes rather than as individuals. "America (which turns Hungarian into 'hunky' & Irishman into 'mick' and Norwegian into 'square- head') is to blame for 'kike,'" he said.^[29]

But readers were still hurt, despite his commentary. Jews, living in the painful aftermath of the Holocaust, felt his very words were antisemitic, in spite of their purpose. William Carlos Williams spoke out in his defence.^[29]

Plays[link]

During his lifetime, Cummings published four plays. HIM, a three-act play, was first produced in 1928 by the Provincetown Players in New York City. The production was directed by James Light. The play's main characters are "Him", a playwright, and "Me", his girlfriend. Cummings said of the unorthodox play:

Relax and give the play a chance to strut its stuff—relax, stop wondering what it is all 'about'—like many strange and familiar things, Life included, this play isn't 'about,' it simply is. . . . Don't try to enjoy it, let it try to enjoy you. DON'T TRY TO UNDERSTAND IT, LET IT TRY TO UNDERSTAND YOU."^[30]

Anthropos, or the Future of Art is a short, one-act play that Cummings contributed to the anthology Whither, Whither or After Sex, What? A Symposium to End Symposium. The play consists of dialogue between Man, the main character, and three "infrahumans", or inferior beings. The word anthropos is the Greek word for "man", in the sense of "mankind".

Tom, A Ballet is a ballet based on Uncle Tom's Cabin. The ballet is detailed in a "synopsis" as well as descriptions of four "episodes", which were published by Cummings in 1935. It has never been performed.^[31]

Santa Claus: A Morality was probably Cummings' most successful play. It is an allegorical Christmas fantasy presented in one act of five scenes. The play was inspired by his daughter Nancy, with whom he was reunited in 1946. It was first published in the Harvard College magazine the Wake. The play's main characters are Santa Claus, his family (Woman and Child), Death, and Mob. At the outset of the play, Santa Claus' family has disintegrated due to their lust for knowledge (Science). After a series of events, however, Santa Claus' faith in love and his rejection of the materialism and disappointment he associates with Science are reaffirmed, and he is reunited with Woman and Child.

Name and capitalization[link]

Cummings's publishers and others have sometimes echoed the unconventional orthography in his poetry by writing his name in lowercase and without periods (full stops), but normal orthography (uppercase and full stops) is supported by scholarship, and preferred by publishers today.^[32] Cummings himself used both the lowercase and capitalized versions, though he most often signed his name with capitals.^[32]

The use of lowercase for his initials was popularized in part by the title of some books, particularly in the 1960s, printing his name in lower case on the cover and spine. In the preface to E. E. Cummings: the growth of a writer critic Harry T. Moore notes " He [Cummings] had his name put legally into lower case, and in his later books the titles and his name were always in lower case." ^[33] According to his widow, this is incorrect.^[32] She wrote of Friedman "you should not have allowed H. Moore to make such a stupid & childish statement about Cummings & his signature." On 27 February 1951, Cummings wrote to his French translator D. Jon Grossman that he preferred the use of upper case for the particular edition they were working on.^[34] One Cummings scholar believes that on the rare occasions that Cummings signed his name in all lowercase, he may have intended it as a gesture of humility, not as an indication that it was the preferred orthography for others to use.^[32]

Critic Edmund Wilson commented "Mr. Cummings’s eccentric punctuation is, also, I believe, a symptom of his immaturity as an artist. It is not merely a question of an unconventional usage: unconventional punctuation may very well gain its effect... the really serious case against Mr. Cummings’s punctuation is that the results which it yields are ugly. His poems on the page are hideous." ^[35]

Awards[link]

During his lifetime, Cummings received numerous awards in recognition of his work, including:

• Dial Award (1925)
• Guggenheim Fellowship (1933)
• Shelley Memorial Award for Poetry (1944)
• Harriet Monroe Prize from Poetry magazine (1950)
• Fellowship of American Academy of Poets (1950)
• Guggenheim Fellowship (1951)
• Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard (1952–1953)
• Special citation from the National Book Award Committee for his Poems, 1923-1954 (1957)
• Bollingen Prize in Poetry (1958)
• Boston Arts Festival Award (1957)
• Two-year Ford Foundation grant of $15,000 (1959)

Books[link]

• The Enormous Room (1922)
• Tulips and Chimneys (1923)
• & (1925) (self-published)
• XLI Poems (1925)
• is 5 (1926)
• HIM (1927) (a play)
• ViVa (1931)
• EIMI (1933) (Soviet travelogue)
• No Thanks (1935)
• Collected Poems (1960)
• 50 Poems (1940)
• 1 × 1 (1944)
• XAIPE: Seventy-One Poems (1950)
• i--six nonlectures (1953) Harvard University Press
• Poems, 1923-1954 (1954)
• 95 Poems (1958)
• 73 Poems (1963) (posthumous)
• Fairy Tales (1965) (posthumous)

	Poetry portal
	Biography portal

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Bloom, Harold, Twentieth-century American literature, New York : Chelsea House Publishers, 1985-1988. ISBN 978-0-87754-802-7.
• Cohen, Milton A. (1987). POETandPAINTER: The Aesthetics of E. E. Cummings' Early Work. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-1845-4. 
• Friedman, Norman (editor), E. E. Cummings: A Collection of Critical Essays. ISBN 978-0-9829733-0-1
• Friedman, Norman, E. E. Cummings: The Art of his Poetry.
• James, George, E. E. Cummings: A Bibliography.
• Kennedy, Richard S. (October 17, 1994) [1980]. Dreams in the Mirror (2nd ed.). New York: Liveright. ISBN 0-87140-155-X. 
• McBride, Katharine, A Concordance to the Complete Poems of E.E.Cummings.
• Mott, Christopher. "The Cummings Line on Race." Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society, vol. 4, pp. 71–75, Fall 1995.
• Norman, Charles, E. E. Cummings: The Magic-Maker, Boston, Little Brown, 1972.
• Sawyer-Lauçanno, Christopher, E. E. Cummings: A Biography, Sourcebooks, Inc. (2004) ISBN 978-1-57071-775-8.

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: E. E. Cummings

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Edward Estlin Cummings

• Works by E. E. Cummings at Project Gutenberg
• E. E. Cummings, Lifelong Unitarian Biography of Cummings and his relationship with Unitarianism
• Papers of E. E. Cummings at the Houghton Library at Harvard University
• E. E. Cummings Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
• Poems by E. E. Cummings at PoetryFoundation.org
• Jonathan Yardley, E. E. Cummings: A Biography, Sunday, October 17, 2004, Page BW02, The Washington Post Book Review
• SPRING:The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society
• Modern American Poetry
• e e cummings at Archive.org. Audio files
• Librivox recordings. Audio files

An emoticon (/ɨˈmoʊtɨkɒn/) is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using punctuation marks and letters, usually written to express a person's mood. Emoticons are often used to alert a responder to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text; emoticons for a smiley face :-) and sad face :-( appear in the first documented use in digital form. The word is a portmanteau word of the English words emotion and icon. In web forums, instant messengers and online games, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which came to be called emoticons as well. Certain complex character combinations can only be accomplished in a double-byte language, giving rise to especially complex forms, sometimes known by their romanized Japanese name of kaomoji.

The use of emoticons can be traced back to the 19th century, and they were commonly used in casual and humorous writing. Digital forms of emoticons on the Internet were included in a proposal by Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a message on 19 September 1982.^[1]

History[link]

Antecedents[link]

The National Telegraphic Review and Operators Guide in April 1857 documented the use of the number 73 in Morse code to express "love and kisses" (later reduced to the more formal "best regards"). Dodge's Manual in 1908 documented the reintroduction of "love and kisses" as the number 88. Gajadhar and Green comment that both Morse code abbreviations are more succinct than modern abbreviations such as LOL.^[2][3]

A New York Times transcript from Abraham Lincoln's speech written in 1862 discovered by Bryan Benilous contains ";)"; there is some debate as to whether it is a typo, a legitimate punctuation construct, or an emoticon.^[4]

Emoticons published in the March 30, 1881 issue of Puck.

Typographical emoticons were published in 1881 by the U.S. satirical magazine Puck. In 1912 Ambrose Bierce proposed "an improvement in punctuation — the snigger point, or note of cachinnation: it is written thus \___/! and presents a smiling mouth. It is to be appended, with the full stop [or exclamation mark as Bierce's later example used], to every jocular or ironical sentence".^[5]

Emoticons had already come into use in sci-fi fandom in the 1940s,^[6] although there seems to have been a lapse in cultural continuity between the communities. In 1963 the "smiley face", a yellow button with two black dots representing eyes and an upturned thick curve representing a mouth was created by freelance artist Harvey Ball. It was realized on order of a large insurance company as part of a campaign to bolster the morale of its employees and soon became a big hit. This smiley presumably inspired many later emoticons; the most basic graphic emoticon that depicts this is in fact a small yellow smiley face.

In a New York Times interview in April 1969, Alden Whitman asked writer Vladimir Nabokov: "How do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate past?" Nabokov answered: "I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile — some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question."^[7]

Creation of :-) and :-([link]

The first person documented to have used the emoticons :-) and :-(, with a specific suggestion that they be used to express emotion, was Scott Fahlman;^[8] the text of his original proposal, posted to the Carnegie Mellon University computer science general board on 19 September 1982 (11:44), was thought to have been lost, but was recovered twenty years later by Jeff Baird from old backup tapes.^[1]

19-Sep-82 11:44    Scott E  Fahlman             :-)
From: Scott E  Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways.  Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends.  For this, use

:-(

Within a few months, it had spread to the ARPANET^[9] and Usenet.^[10] Many variations on the theme were immediately suggested by Scott and others.

Western style[link]

Traditionally, the emoticon in Western style is written from left to right, the way one reads and writes in most Western cultures. Thus, most commonly, emoticons have the eyes on the left, followed by the nose and mouth.

Common western examples[link]

The most basic emoticons are relatively consistent in form, but each of them can also be transformed by being rotated (making them tiny ambigrams), with or a without hyphen (nose). There are also some possible variations to emoticons to get new definitions, like changing a character to express a new feeling, or slightly change the mood of the emoticon. For example :( equals sad and :(( equals very sad or weeping. Similar to :(, using an A expresses a open mouthed frown; oAo. A :"> blush can be expressed as :"u blushing for you or a surprised blush, o///o . Others include wink ;) a grin :D [which can also be reversed for an unhappy face D: ] smug :-> and tongue out :P for disgust or simply just to stick the tongue out for silliness, such as when blowing a raspberry. An often used combination is also <3 for a heart, and </3 for a broken heart. A representation of a cat face can be expressed like this: :3-] Along with a mustache emoticon  :{) A broad grin is often shown with crinkled eyes to express further amusement: XD and the addition of further 'D' letters can suggest laughter or extreme amusement e.g. XDDDD. There are hundreds of other variations including >:D for an evil grin or >:( for anger, which can be, again, used in reverse, for an unhappily angry face, in the shape of D:< .owo for a goofy grin, =K for vampire teeth, :s for grimace or >.< for eye-crinkling exasperation, and ;P for wanting to be more than friends. ;P can also be used to denote a flirting or joking tone, or may be implying a second meaning in the sentence preceding it.

Variation[link]

An equal sign is often used for the eyes in place of the colon, seen as =), without changing the meaning of the emoticon. In these instances, the hyphen is almost always either omitted or, occasionally, replaced with an 'o' as in =O . In most circles it has become acceptable to omit the hyphen, whether a colon or an equal sign is used for the eyes, e.g. :) .^[11] In some areas of usage, people prefer the larger, more traditional emoticon :-) . In general, similar-looking characters are commonly substituted for one another: for instance, o, O, and 0 can all be used interchangeably, sometimes for subtly different effect. In some cases, one type of character may look better in a certain font and therefore be preferred over another.

Some variants are also more common in certain countries because of reasons like keyboard layouts. For example, the smiley =) is common in Scandinavia, where the keys for = and ) are placed right beside each other. Also, sometimes, the user can replace the brackets used for the mouth with other, similar shapes, such as ] and [ instead of ) and ( .

Diacritical marks are sometimes used. The letters Ö and Ü can be seen as an emoticon, as the upright version of :O (meaning that one is surprised) and :D (meaning that one is very happy).

Some emoticons may be written right to left as well, and in fact can only be written using standard ASCII keyboard characters this way round; for example D: which refers to being shocked or anxious.

Japanese style[link]

Users from Japan popularized a style of emoticons that can be understood without tilting one's head to the left. This style arose on ASCII NET of Japan in 1986.^[12][13] Similar looking emoticons were used by Byte Information Exchange (BIX) around the same time.^[14]

These emoticons are usually found in a format similar to (*_*). The asterisks indicate the eyes; the central character, commonly an underscore, the mouth; and the parentheses, the outline of the face.

Different emotions such as (")(-_-)("), are expressed by changing the character representing the eyes, for example ' T ' can be used to express crying or sadness (T_T). The emphasis on the eyes is reflected in the common usage of emoticons that use only the eyes, e.g. ^^. Looks of stress are represented by the likes of (x_x) while (-_-;) is a generic emoticon for nervousness, the semicolon indicating sweat that occurs during anxiety. Repeating the /// mark (///) can indicate embarrassment by symbolizing blushing. Characters like hyphens or periods can replace the underscore; the period is often used for a smaller, "cuter" mouth or to represent a nose, e.g. (^.^). Alternatively, the mouth/nose can be left out entirely, e.g. (^^). The parentheses also can often be replaced with braces, e.g. {^_^}. Many times, the parentheses are left out completely, e.g. ^^, >.<, o_O, O.O, <.<;. o-o,e_e,e.e and/or owo. A quotation mark ", apostrophe ', or semicolon ; can be added to the emoticon to imply apprehension or embarrassment, in the same way that a sweat drop is used in popular and common asian animation.

Microsoft IME 2002 (Japanese) or later supports the use of both forms of emoticons by enabling Microsoft IME Spoken Language Dictionary. In IME 2007, it was moved to Emoticons dictionary.

Further variations of emoticons may be produced by using combining characters, e.g. ̼⌂̺͛ᴖ̲̿ᴥ̲̿ᴖ̺͛⌂̼ and ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶ and ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ.

Common eastern examples[link]

All of these can be used also with [ ] instead of ( ), or without the parentheses at all in some of the cases.

Western use of Japanese style[link]

English-language anime forums adopted those emoticons that could be used with the standard ASCII characters available on western keyboards. Because of this, they are often called "anime style" emoticons in the English-speaking Internet. They have since seen use in more mainstream venues, including online gaming, instant-messaging, and other non-anime related forums. Emoticons such as <( ^.^ )>,<(^_^<),<(o_o<),<( -'.'- )>,<('.'-^), (>';..;')> which include the parentheses, mouth or nose, and arms (especially those represented by the inequality signs < or >) also are often referred to as "Kirbies" in reference to their likeness to Nintendo's video game character, Kirby. The parentheses are sometimes dropped when used in the English language context, and the underscore of the mouth may be extended as an intensifier, (e.g. ^______________^ for very happy) for the emoticon in question. This emoticon t(-_-t) uses the eastern style, but incorporates a depiction of the western "middle-finger flick-off (commonly known as 'the bird')" using a 't' as the arm, hand, and finger. Also, one of the newer ones, *,..,*. As such for a "vampire" or other mythical beasts with fangs.

Mixture of Western and Japanese style[link]

Exposure to both Western and Japanese style emoticons or emoji through web blogs, instant messaging, and forums featuring a blend of Western and Japanese pop culture, has given rise to emoticons that have an upright viewing format. The parentheses are similarly dropped in the English language context and the emoticons only use alphanumeric characters and the most commonly used English punctuation marks. Emoticons such as -O-, -3-, -w-, '_', ;_;, T_T, :>, and .V., are used to convey mixed emotions that are more difficult to convey with traditional emoticons. Characters are sometimes added to emoticons to convey an anime or manga-styled sweat drop, for example: ^_^' or !>_<! or ^3^' or v3v; as well as: <@>_________<@>;; ;O; and *u* The equal sign can also be used for closed, anime looking eyes, for example: =0=, =3=, =w=, =A=, =7=

There are also more faces along those lines like >o<; using the ; as a sweat mark, and the "o" as a mouth, and the inequality signs as the eyes, it shows stress, or slight confusion. The amount of emoticons that can be made are limitless, and all have their own meaning.

In Brazil, sometimes combining character (accent) are added to emoticons to represent eyebrows, like: ò_ó or ó_ò or õ_o or ù_u or o_Ô. They can also replace (or add) "=" or ":" by ">", example: >D or >=D or >P or >:P or >3 or >:3.

2channel style[link]

The Japanese language is usually encoded using double-byte character codes. As a result there is a bigger variety of characters that can be used in emoticons, many of which cannot be reproduced in ASCII. Most kaomoji contain Cyrillic and other foreign letters to create even more complicated expressions analogous to ASCII art's level of complexity. To type such emoticons, the input editor that is used to type Japanese on a user's system is equipped with a dictionary of emoticons, after which the user simply types the Japanese word (or something close to it) that represents the desired emoticon to convert the input into such complicated emoticons. Such expressions are known as Shift JIS art.^{[citation needed]}

Users of 2channel in particular have developed a wide variety of unique emoticons using obscure characters. Some have taken on a life of their own and become characters in their own right, like Mona.

Korean Style[link]

In South Korea, emoticons using Korean Hangul letters are popular as well. Korean styles of face emoticons are similar to those of Japan's, but they contain Korean jamos (letters) instead of other characters. There are countless number of emoticons that can be formed with such combinations of Korean jamos, but popular choices include letter ㅅ or ㅂ as the mouth/nose component and ㅇ,ㅎ,ㅍ for the eyes. For example: ㅇㅅㅇ, ㅇㅂㅇ, -ㅅ-, ㅡㅡ, ㅡ6ㅡ, ㄱㅡ,┐-. Faces such as 'ㅅ', "ㅅ", 'ㅂ','ㅇ', using quotation marks " and apostrophes ' are also commonly used combinations. Vowel jamos such as ㅜ,ㅠ can be used in substitute to T, when depicting a crying face. Example: //ㅅ//, ㅜㅜ, ㅠㅠ, 뉴뉴. Sometimes the underscore is omitted, and the two letters can be mixed together, as in ㅜ_ㅠ, ㅡ^ㅜ, ㅜㅇㅡ . Also, semicolons are used a lot in Korean emoticons. Example: ㅡㅂㅡ , ㅇㅅㅇ , ㅇㅁㅇ , ㅇㅂㅇ , ^ㅂ^ , ㅠㅅㅠ. Most often used ^^, ~_~, ㅜㅜ --zZ ㅋㅋ.!(۞_۞)

Chinese ideographic style[link]

The character 囧 (U+56E7), which means 'bright',^[15] is also used in the Chinese computing community for a frowning face.^[16] It is also combined with posture emoticon Orz, such as 囧rz. The character existed in Oracle bone script, but its use as emoticon was documented as early as January 20, 2005.^[17]

Other ideographic variants for 囧 include 崮 (king 囧), 莔 (queen 囧), 商 (囧 with hat), 囧興 (turtle), 卣 (Bomberman).

The character 槑 (U+69D1), which means 'plum', is used to represent double of '呆' (dull), or further magnitude of dullness.^[18] In Chinese, normally full characters (as opposed to the stylistic use of 槑) may be duplicated to express emphasis.

Posture emoticons[link]

Orz[link]

Orz (also seen as Or2, on_, OTZ, OTL, STO, JTO,^[19] _no, ＿冂○,^[20] 囧rz,^[17] O7Z, _|7O, Sto, O|¯|_, orz, and Jto^{[original research?]}) is an emoticon representing a kneeling or bowing person, with the "o" being the head, the "r" being the arms and part of the body, and the "z" being part of the body and the legs. This stick figure represents failure and despair.^[19] It is also commonly used for representing a great admiration (sometimes with an overtone of sarcasm) for someone else's view or action.^{[citation needed]}

It was first used in late 2002 at the forum on Techside, Japanese personal website. At the "Techside FAQ Forum" (TECHSIDE教えて君BBS(教えてBBS) ), a poster asked about a cable cover, typing "＿|￣|○" to show a cable and its cover. Others commented that it looked like a kneeling person, and the symbol became popular. These comments were soon deleted as they were considered off-topic. However, one of the first corresponding reactions can be found on the thread on "Techside Chitchat Forum" (Techside一言板。) at the Wayback Machine, on December 23, 2002.^{[original research?]} By 2005, Orz spawned a subculture: blogs have been devoted to the emoticon, and URL shortening services have been named after it. In Taiwan, Orz is associated with the phrase "nice guy"—that is, the concept of males being rejected for a date by girls they are pursuing with a phrase like "You are a nice guy."^[19]

Orz should not be confused with m(_ _)m, which means "Thank you" or an apology.^{[citation needed]}

Multimedia variations[link]

A portmanteau of emotion and sound, an emotisound is a brief sound transmitted and played back during the viewing of a message, typically an IM message or e-mail message. The sound is intended to communicate an emotional subtext.^{[citation needed]} Many instant messaging clients automatically trigger sound effects in response to specific emoticons.^{[citation needed]}

Some services, such as MuzIcons, combine emoticons and music player in a Adobe Flash-based widget.^[21]

In 2004, The Trillian chat application introduced a feature called "emotiblips", which allows Trillian users to stream files to their instant message recipients "as the voice and video equivalent of an emoticon".^[22]

In 2007, MTV and Paramount Home Entertainment promoted the "emoticlip" as a form of viral marketing for the second season of the show The Hills. The emoticlips were twelve short snippets of dialogue from the show, uploaded to YouTube, which the advertisers hoped would be distributed between web users as a way of expressing feelings in a similar manner to emoticons. The emoticlip concept is credited to the Bradley & Montgomery advertising firm, which hopes they would be widely adopted as "greeting cards that just happen to be selling something".^[23]

In 2008 an emotion-sequence animation tool, called FunIcons was created. The Adobe Flash and Java-based application allows users to create a short animation. Users can then email or save their own animations to use them on similar social utility applications.^[24]

Emoticons and intellectual property rights[link]

Patented drop down menu for composing phone mail text message with emoticons. US 6987991 

In 2000 Despair, Inc. obtained a U.S. trademark registration for the "frowny" emoticon :-( when used on "greeting cards, posters and art prints." In 2001, they issued a satirical press release, announcing that they would sue Internet users who typed the frowny; the joke backfired and the company received a storm of protest when its mock release was posted at technology news website Slashdot.^[25] A number of patent applications have been filed on inventions that assist in communicating with emoticons. A few of these have issued as US patents. US 6987991 , for example, discloses a method developed in 2001 to send emoticons over a cell phone using a drop down menu. The stated advantage over the prior art was that the user saved on the number of keystrokes though this may not address the obviousness criteria.

In Finland, the emoticons :-), =), =(, :) and :( were trademarked in 2006 for use with various products and services.^[26] The emoticon :-) was also filed in 2006 and registered in 2008 as a European Community Trademark (CTM).

In 2008, Russian entrepreneur Oleg Teterin claimed to have been granted the trademark on the ;-) emoticon. A license would not "cost that much – tens of thousands of dollars" for companies, but would be free of charge for individuals.^[27]

Unicode[link]

Emoticons are introduced in Unicode Standard version 6.0. It covers unicode range from 1F600 to 1F64F.^[28]

See also[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Walther, J. B., & D'Addario, K. P. (2001). "The impacts of emoticons on message interpretation in computer-mediated communication". Social Science Computer Review 19 (3): 323–345. DOI:10.1177/089443930101900307. 
• Wolf, Alecia. 2000. "Emotional Expression Online: Gender Differences in Emoticon Use." CyberPsychology & Behavior 3: 827–833.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Smiley

Look up common emoticons in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Sept. 19, 1982: Can’t You Take a Joke? :-)

Examples[link]

• List of Gmail chat emoticons
• List of MSN messenger emoticons
• List of Yahoo messenger emoticons
• How to insert few emoticons in Microsoft Office
• In Praise of Emoticons – slideshow by Life magazine

Japanese emoticons[link]

• 2-byte Japanese emoticons
• Article – A Guide to Anime Emoticons Western usage of kaomoji
• List of Microsoft Office Input Method Editor emoticons (Japanese)

Laurence Fishburne
Laurence Fishburne, September 2008
Born	Laurence John Fishburne III (1961-07-30) July 30, 1961 (age 50) Augusta, Georgia, U.S.
Other names	Larry Fishburne
Occupation	Actor, director, producer, playwright
Years active	1972–present
Spouse	Hajna O. Moss (1985 – 199?), Gina Torres (2002 – current)
Children	Langston Fishburne (b.1987) Montana Fishburne (b.1991) Delilah Fishburne (b.2007)
Website
http://www.laurence-fishburne.com

Laurence John Fishburne III^[1] (born July 30, 1961) is an American film and stage actor, playwright, director, and producer. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Morpheus in the Matrix science fiction film trilogy, as Cowboy Curtis on the 1980's television show Pee-wee's Playhouse, and as singer-musician Ike Turner in the Tina Turner biopic What's Love Got to Do With It. He became the first African American to portray Othello in a motion picture by a major studio when he appeared in Oliver Parker's 1995 film adaptation of the Shakespeare play. From 2008 to 2011, he starred as Dr. Raymond Langston on the CBS crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Fishburne has won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in Two Trains Running (1992) and an Emmy Award for Drama Series Guest Actor for his performance in TriBeCa (1993).

Early years[link]

Fishburne was born in Augusta, Georgia, the son of Hattie Bell (née Crawford), a junior high school mathematics and science teacher, and Laurence John Fishburne, Jr., a juvenile corrections officer.^[2] His parents divorced during his childhood, and he moved with his mother to Brooklyn, New York, where he was raised. Fishburne's father saw him once a month.^[3][4] He is a graduate of Lincoln Square Academy in New York, which closed in the 1980s.

Career[link]

1970s[link]

Fishburne started acting at age eleven (according to his January 13, 2012 interview on The View which commemorated One Life to Live) getting his first job in 1973 as a short-lived member of the Mod Squad followed by portraying Joshua Hall on the ABC soap opera, One Life to Live. He was initially cast in the hit television series Good Times, but the role was eventually given to Ralph Carter. Fishburne's most memorable childhood role was in Cornbread, Earl and Me in which he played a young boy who witnessed the police shooting of a popular high school basketball star. Fishburne later earned a supporting role in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, in which he played a 17-year-old sailor nicknamed 'Mr. Clean'. When production began in March 1976 he was just fourteen, apparently lying about his age to get the part. Filming took so long that he was seventeen upon its completion. Fishburne was also a guest star on Mash as "Corporal Dorsey" in "The Tooth Shall Set You Free" (episode 1014).

1980s[link]

Fishburne spent much of the 1980s in and out of television and periodically on stage. In the early 1980s, he worked as a bouncer at punk rock clubs.^[5] He had a minor role in the critically acclaimed Steven Spielberg film The Color Purple. He also had a role in the 1984 movie The Cotton Club. Fishburne had a recurring role as Cowboy Curtis on Paul Reubens' CBS children's television show Pee-wee's Playhouse. He also appeared in the M*A*S*H episode, "The Tooth Shall Set You Free", as Corporal Dorsey (billed as Larry Fishburne in the credits). In Spenser: For Hire, he was a guest star for the 2nd season episode "Personal Demons". He appeared as a thug named Cutter in Death Wish 2 (1982). He also appeared alongside Kevin Bacon in Quicksilver. His stage work during the 1980s included Short Eyes (1984), and Loose Ends (1987), both produced at Second Stage Theatre in New York City. Also in 1987 he played a part in the third Nightmare On Elm Street film as a hospital orderly. Fishburne played as Lt. Charlie Stobbs (under Larry Fishburne) in Red Heat (1988) beside Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Belushi. Fishburne also starred as "Dap" in Spike Lee's School Daze (1988). Fishburne's character was the depiction of an African American, culturally inclined college student at an HBCU (Historically Black College/University).

1990s[link]

In 1990, he played Jimmy Jump in the controversial King of New York, and in 1991, Fishburne starred in Boyz n the Hood. The following year, in 1992, he won a Tony Award for his stage performance in the August Wilson play, Two Trains Running and an Emmy Award^[6] for his performance in the opening episode, "The Box," of the short-lived anthology series television drama TriBeCa. He also starred in "Deep Cover" along side Jeff Goldblum. In 1993, he received his first Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Ike Turner in What's Love Got to Do With It. In an 1995 American drama film, starring an ensemble cast, Laurence Fishburne won an Image Award for "Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture" for his performance in Higher Learning as West Indian Professor Maurice Phipps. He played the title role in Othello, the second African American actor, behind Paul Robeson to be so cast. In 1997, Fishburne starred in the science fiction horror Event Horizon alongside Sam Neill. Fishburne is perhaps best known for his role as Morpheus, the hacker-mentor of Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, in the 1999 blockbuster science fiction film, The Matrix, he gained a significant amount of weight for the following sequels to give the character more screen presence.

2000s – 2010s[link]

Fishburne provided the voice of Thrax in Osmosis Jones in 2001. Fishburne reprised his role as Morpheus in the Matrix sequels, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolutions in 2003. He briefly featured as a stretcher-bearer in one version of the video for The Spooks' song "Things I've Seen" (2000) and appeared with Tom Cruise as Theodore Brassell, IMF superior of Cruise's character in Mission: Impossible III.

Fishburne has worked with actress Angela Bassett on four projects. He said that "An electrifying thing happens when the two of us work together. I haven't experienced it with anyone else. A freedom happens when we work together."^{[cite this quote]} In 2006, they appeared onstage in a Pasadena Playhouse production of August Wilson's Fences.^[7]

He provided the voice of the narrator in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) movie, which was released on March 23, 2007.^[8] The same year, he provided the voice of the Silver Surfer in 2007 film Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

On February 24, 2007, Fishburne was honored with the Harvard Foundation's Artist of the Year award at the annual show Cultural Rhythms. He received this honor for his prowess as an actor and entertainer and for his humanitarian pursuits. Fishburne is a UNICEF ambassador.^[9] The mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mayor Kenneth Reeves awarded him the key to the city and declared February 24 "Laurence Fishburne" day in the city of Cambridge.^[10]

In April 2008, Fishburne returned to the stage in the Broadway production of Thurgood, a new play by George Stevens, Jr. Thurgood opened at the Booth Theatre on April 30, 2008.^[11] He won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show for his performance.

On August 18, 2008, it was reported that Laurence Fishburne would join the cast of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation after William Petersen (aka Gil Grissom) left the series. John Malkovich was also considered for the role prior to the announcement.^[12] Fishburne joined the show on the ninth episode of the 9th season as a college professor and former pathologist whose area of expertise involves some criminals' predisposition to commit acts of violence.^[13] The character was introduced as a consultant on a case ("19 Down"), who winds up joining the CSI team ("One to Go").

In May 2009, Fishburne performed on-stage in the National Memorial Day Concert on the Mall in Washington, D.C.^[14]

Fishburne starred in 2010's Predators.^[15] He co-starred with Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, and Marion Cotillard in Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (2011).^[16]

Fishburne also starred in a one-man play about Thurgood Marshall at the Kennedy Center.

On June 7, 2011, Fishburne announced that he was leaving C.S.I. to return to movies and theatre, opting not to renew his contract and would not appear in Season 12.

On August 2, 2011 it was announced that Fishburne had been cast in the role of Perry White in the Christopher Nolan produced, Zack Snyder directed Superman reboot Man of Steel.^[17] This will mark the first time that the character has been played by an African American actor.

Personal life[link]

Fishburne in September 2006.

Fishburne married actress Hajna O. Moss in 1985,^{[citation needed]} in New York. They have two children together: a son, Langston, born in 1987,^{[citation needed]} and a daughter, Montana, born in 1991. Hajna and Laurence divorced in the 1990s. In 2010, it was reported that Fishburne had cut ties with his daughter Montana Fishburne after she started starring in hardcore pornographic films.^[18][19][20]

Fishburne met actress Gina Torres while filming The Matrix Reloaded. He and Torres were engaged in February 2001 and married on September 22, 2002,^[21] at The Cloisters museum in New York City. On January 8, 2007, Fishburne's spokesman Alan Nierob announced the couple were expecting their first child together.^[22][23] A daughter, Delilah, was born to the couple in June 2007.^[24]

Fishburne lives in Hollywood^[25] and also maintains a residence in New York City, in the Castle Village Co-Op in the Hudson Heights section of Washington Heights.^[26] He is a big fan of Paulo Coelho and plans to produce a movie based on the novel The Alchemist.^[27]

Filmography[link]

Stage and screen credits[link]

Stage[link]

Awards and nominations[link]

Film[link]