Arnold Zwicky's Blog

In the Washington Post yesterday, a piece “A whole lot of history behind ‘x’ and ‘o,’ kiss and hug” by Nadine Epstein, which asks the question:

Where do those symbols come from, these ur-emoticons that we sprinkle so liberally across our correspondence?

Lots of sources cited, some more authoritative than others. Included are ADS-Lers Stephen Goranson and Ben Zimmer, plus Deborah Tannen.

This entry was posted on February 14, 2014 at 7:53 am and is filed under Holidays, Signs and symbols. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.