In the 1990s people started using the internet and emails as a regular way of communicating. So that they could show happiness or fun in an easy way, people started making little smiling faces using some of the symbols on the keyboard. A keyboard smiley has a colon ":" for the eyes, a hyphen "-" for the nose, and a parenthesis ")" for the mouth. Some people make the smiley without the hyphen for a nose. The "smileys" that are made in this way are sideways.