Adding Smiley Faces to Your Writing

Emoticons are those funny little faces people love to put in their e-mails. You know the type, made with colons, dashes, and other characters. For instance, :-) is an emoticon for a smiley face. (Look at it sideways and you see two eyes, a nose, and a smiling mouth.)

If you type an emoticon Word, it is automatically transformed into a "dingbat" character that shows the smiling face, frowning face, or neutral face. The following are the different emoticons and how they are converted:

The actual conversion of the emoticons to their dingbat equivalents is done through the AutoCorrect feature of Word. If you don't want the conversion to take place, you can do the following:

1. Click the Office button and then click Word Options. Word displays the Word Options dialog box.
2. At the left side of the dialog box click Proofing.
3. Click the AutoCorrect Options button. Word displays the AutoCorrect dialog box with the AutoCorrect tab selected. (Click here to see a related figure.)
4. In the list of replacements at the bottom of the dialog box, choose the emoticon you don't want converted. (Hint: All the emoticons are near the beginning of the replacement list.)
5. Click the Delete button. The emoticon replacement is deleted.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for any other emoticons you want deleted.
7. Click the OK button to close the AutoCorrect dialog box.
8. Click the Cancel button to close the Word Options dialog box.