Emoticon
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. U.S. patent 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.