Want to use a smiley outside of chat?

Try this:

☺

Using that little mess of numbers (called an HTML character entity) in your online document will yield a cute little smiley:

☺

This little smiley (and all the other character entities) will work if your online document or page is using a standard font (the fonts in this post should all work) and is being displayed in a modern browser (more on this below). Here are two extensive and detailed lists of character identities: Character Entity HTML Reference and HTML Character Entities. Here's a quick reference of the ones I think are coolest:

Looks like	Character Entity	Description
☺	☺	Smiley face
☻	☻	Inverted smiley face
☹	☹	Frowny face
	 	Non-breaking space - like hitting the spacebar (ever noticed your double-spaces after a period don't work online? Use  )
¼	¼	Fraction one-quarter
½	½	Fraction one-half
¾	¾	Fraction three-quarters
•	•	Bullet
©	©	Copyright sign
®	®	Registered sign
™	™	Trademark sign
♥	♥	Hearts suit (in cards)
★	★	Star
☂	☂	Umbrella (rain)
☮	☮	Peace sign
☯	☯	Yin & Yang
♘	♘	White Knight (chess)
♪	♪	Eighth note

How it works: Browsers are designed to read HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) documents (history of HTML here). Unlike plain-text or word-processing documents (static documents), HTML documents are built up with all kinds of tags and symbols and codes, telling the browser how to display the content. So you could be typing a sentence and mid-way decide to break into song "♪A whole ♩♬ new world!♫" Try it. Next time you update your facebook or twitter, throw a little ✄ or ☢ to really get your message across.