  What Is It? All technical nonsense aside, internet relay chat (IRC) is a method by which people can communicate from anywhere in the world given that they have access to the internet. The essential idea is that when you type something in it will appear on the monitors of anyone else in the world who cares to see it. And of course, you see what they type. You can communicate privately with one person, or with a whole "channel" full of people. It is even possible to participate multiple private sessions and multiple channels at the same time. IRC is great fun and you'll sure meet lots of interesting people and find nice spots to hang out! But, IRC is not something that you should just jump into without first reading up on it. You could feel very lost if you do not know some basic commands before you enter IRC, and you might not even know how to get out of IRC after that :o) So, we suggest you read some documentation (help files, readmes, FAQs etc) before you get connected to an IRC server, or it can be very frustrating for you when you get stuck. Cyberculture Once you get into IRC, you are bound to experience a "cyber- culture shock." IRC is actually a sort of virtual community with a language all of its own. English is almost exclusively spoken in all countries, but IRC has adapted a dialect that can be confusing at first. In the IRC world, spelling and punctuation have been for the most part abandoned. Because no one wants to bother typing everything out exactly right, wasting time in the process, punctuation is rarely used, and typographical errors are common. The IRC community has adapted its own set of punctuation, spelling rules, and acronyms for simplicity. Spelling Words are often spelled differently from the conventional spelling, sometimes to save keystrokes, and sometimes just to be different. Example instead of "cool" it becomes "kewl" and "thanks" becomes "thanx." Acronyms The IRC community has developed a number of acronyms and abbreviations for common phrases which can be very confusing to a new user. I have listed all the ones I have seen. All of them are used widely and understood by most experienced users.
Emoticons Emoticons are facial expressions symbolized using simple tricks with characters. For example, tilt your head ninety degrees to the left and look at the following line. :-) Do you see the person smiling? This is just one of the many variations of faces found on IRC. Here are a list of examples i've found.
This is by no means a complete list of emoticons I've seen on IRC. Be creative! Try inventing your own emoticons and dazzle your IRC neighbors.  
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