Hey, Answer Girl -

What does it mean when someone writes colon, hyphen, right parenthesis at the end of an e-mail? People are always sending this message to me, and I don't know what it stands for!

- Judy in Casper

The colon, hyphen, right parenthesis doesn't necessarily mean anything - it doesn't spell a word, for example - but that symbol has come to stand for a "smiley face," or Internet happiness in general.

Look at the symbol those three punctuation marks make, but look at it with your head turned to the left, from the side.

It looks a bit like a happy face, doesn't it? At least in the digital age, it has to suffice.

While symbols like that one may not mean a lot to the generations that were raised without high-speed Internet and instant messaging services, those of us who have used personal computers since we were toddlers have become accustomed to such digital niceties. They've been dubbed "emoticons," or emotional icons.

Likewise, instead of hearing a friend's laugh, you may instead see "LOL" (laugh out loud) pop up on the screen. A sad face still uses the colon and the hyphen, but the left parenthesis instead of the right. Want to make the sad face cry? Add an asterisk after the colon but before the hyphen.

And by the way - although I said people of my generation have become used to emoticons, they were somewhat in use before my time. The first documented case of an emoticon was published in Puck magazine in the late 1800s, although they weren't called that and they weren't widely used. In 1982, the Carnegie Mellon University computer board began using the face to denote a joke, since it's hard to tell if someone's kidding or being sarcastic when you're reading text.

Hey, Answer Girl -

Why is Casper called Casper? Seems kind of stupid, because of the ghost references we always hear.

- Anonymous

Casper the city doesn't have anything to do with the famously friendly ghost, although I think the reference is neat.

And the person who lent Casper his name is a ghost by now - or long-dead, at least.

Lieutenant Caspar Collins - note the difference in spelling between the name of the man and the name of the town - was killed by a group of American Indian warriors in 1865, and the fort just west of the now-city was renamed for him.

Because a Fort Collins already existed just south in Colorado, the new fort adopted Lieutenant Collins' first name, Caspar, instead.

A poor speller named the town next door after the fort itself had already been closed, attempting to honor the fallen soldier but botching his name just a bit. And Casper, Wyoming was born.

Contact reporter Megan Lee at (307) 266-0616 or megan.lee@trib.com

Ask Answer Girl

Answer Girl tackles questions about Casper, the universe and everything else. Submit your questions by e-mail to megan.lee@trib.com, or call Megan Lee at 266-0616. You can also write to Answer Girl, Box 80, 170 Star Lane, Casper, WY, 82602.