Using or Not Using Smilies on Your Blog

Yesterday I wrote a post, What Can You Do With Your API Key?. After I published it, I saw this smiley showing up on my blog. I was wondering how I got that. I knew I am pretty new to WordPress.com. Moreover, I did not learn how to use smilies yet. Besides I am not a big fan for using smilies. So I was really puzzled. I checked my editor but didn’t see anything on its toolbar showing us how to use any smilies. I searched the Internet for an answer. From What smilies can I use?, I found out that ‘8)’ was the main reason for displaying this smiley (meaning cool) on my blog.

In my post, What Can You Do With Your API Key? I had a date written as (4/28/2008), but it was truncated to be (4/28/200 and turned ‘8)’ to be . It was all messed up. If you don’t want to use any smilies, then you can turn it off from your admin interface. Login to your WordPress Dashboard, click on Settings/Writings, find Formatting, uncheck Convert emoticons like and to graphics on display. After you’ve done that, make sure you click on Save Changes button to save it. See the screenshot below:

Update: I know many people love to use smilies. I become to like it a little bit better. Occasionally I will use some of them. I guess if you know how to control them, then they will not mess up your blog. You may bookmark this post for future reference. I even come back to check how each similey is represented here whenever I need to use them.

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What Are Smileys?
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