1995 — Mary E. S. Morris, HTML for Fun and Profit, SunSoft Press (1995), →ISBN, page 5:
One of the most significant inroads that WWW has made into the Internet culture is the HTML-ization of emotags.
2001 — Kevin F. Rothman, Coping with Dangers on the Internet: Staying Safe On-Line, The Rosen Publishing Group (2001), →ISBN, pagge 45:
Another alternative to emoticons is the use of emotags, which are derived from HTML. Emotags are tags that explain the emotion that goes along with written words.
2004 — Marcel Danesi, Messages, Signs, and Meanings: A Basic Textbook in Semiotics and Communication, Canadian Scholars' Press Inc. (2004), →ISBN, page 78:
In an e-mail message or newsgroup article, a letter, word, or phrase that is encased in angle brackets, and that, like an emoticon, indicates the attitude the writer takes toward what he or she has written is called an emotag. Often emotags have opening and closing tags, similar to HTML tags, that enclose a phrase or one or more sentences.
