It's a "feature" in your browser. Mozilla does it, so I imagine that
most clients have the option.

Jim

John Rodgers wrote:
>
> When the message got to me, what I had on screen at the end of the line
> was a graphic, pure and simple. A bright yellow emoticon graphic, not
> ascii text characters. If this is not from HTML, then how does it get
> converted from ascii to a graphic presentation.