I have started to punctuate my smileys. It would be interesting to see if other people who tend to be prudish about grammar are doing the same. If so, we can declare smileys a part of formal, written English. And the language will be the richer for it.
3 comments:
Example sentence in modern modern English:
I <3 u, :)!
Yup, it's richer.
Although really, we're just resorting back to pictographs
Fair point. But I make a bit of a distinction between smileys and the other stuff that 'netspeak' has thrown up. Most of the others may be synonyms or acronyms (<3 -> love, u -> you, lol -> laugh out loud (or, as my mother stubbornly insists in her emails 'lots of love') etc... Smileys, however, serve an entirely different purpose - they add emotional information. They succintly depict the mood behind the sentence. This can be quite useful, especially in cases where a sentence can have many emotions behind it. For instance-
Without smileys:
I: Would you go out on a date with me !?!
You: Sorry, no. I have a boyfriend.
I: Oh really !?! I didn't know that. Sorry.
You: No problem.
I: Thanks.
With smileys:
I: Would you go out on a date with me !?!
You: Sorry, no. I have a boyfriend :p.
I: Oh really :o :o !?! I didn't know that. Sorry.
You: No problem. :).
I: Thanks :D.
The first conversation would probably leave both parties feeling rather awkward. The second smoothly indicates the fact that you haven't taken it seriously and aren't uncomfortable. Ditto me.
I should make this a separate blog post :).
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