How can I prevent an emoticon from displaying?

There are 2 solutions:

• Solution 1: Disable the display of all emoticons. This is done by turning off the Icon Transformation, see Rendering Transformation configuration for details on how to do that.
• Solution 2: Escape the text representing the emoticon so that it's not displayed as an emoticon. For example if you have:
  This is fun :)

  You can escape it using XWiki Syntax 2.0+ by using the verbatim syntax ({{{...}}}), as follows:

  This is fun {{{:)}}}
• Solution 3: Since XWiki 8.4.5+/9.3RC1+. Redefine the emoticon in xwiki.properties with a blank value. For example to prevent (n) from displaying you'd add:
  rendering.transformation.icon.mappings = (n) =

  See the Icon Transformation documentation for more.