compartmentsee: Emoticonned

I am quite fascinated by emoticons. I don’t feel all that comfortable using them, though. When I was at school in the 80s, teaching grammar wasn’t at all fashionable, so today, being confronted with punctuation marks makes me very nervous.

On an emotional level, even more so. ;-)

To overcome my fear of the emoticon, and punctuation marks in general, I decided to read up on them. I found out they were invented by Scott E Fahlman in 1982, a Research Professor in Computer Science in America.

Surprising information for some >:o,

Not for others, however, who might fight this historical excurs a bit dull. |-o

Emoticons were apparently introduced as a solution for the misunderstandings that could take place on campus bulletin boards, to ensure that a jokey comment was not misinterpreted.

Some people, though, are still of the opinion that the emoticon impoverishes the written language. :(

They blow a raspberry at the emoticon. :P

Others, like me, may feel like a dunce <:-|

and not understand what the emoticon means, and have to explain it in words anyway (see above) which kind of defeats the object.

I found out, too, that there are Western and Eastern emoticons.

There is some confusion (° .° ) perhaps as to the difference between an Eastern and a Western Emoticon.

If you haven’t fallen asleep already ( - _ - ) zzz, I hope these examples have cleared it up enough to make you happy that you do not have to turn your head sideways to experience an emotion.

(•ˆoˆ•)!

I can’t imagine anyone will seriously challenge the rise of the emoticon. Ø

In fact, some enlightened folk like Zeel are already capitalising on it :

an emoticon for whom I have made a German mate

(ö˛ö)

/(€ )⁄

ßß

When I am skyping with my nieces, I face another dilemma. The dreaded punctuation marks are gone, and have been replaced by little animated emoticons.