On Jan 9, 2009, at 9:11 PM, Julio Huato wrote:
ravi wrote:
I have always considered the avoidance of emoticons a strange sort of
social ineptitude or ignorance (perhaps driven by a fear of loss of
gravitas?). I am glad to see you have seen the light!
My reasoning was a bit different.
E-mail addresses required this new symbol @. Modern math, logic, etc.
continuously introduce new symbols, because they need them to denote
new things.
Emotions, on the other hand, have been around for a while. And it
seemed that traditional writing had managed well to communicate
emotions without new symbols. Why use them then?
It's not that I have never used them, but I always felt it was sloppy.
Or lazy.
IMHO, quite the contrary, the lack of them is often impolite. The
reason (again IMHO) is because email threads are not the equivalent of
formal theses or even written letters, but of fast moving
conversations in a social setting. The exceptions are highly technical
or focused lists -- which are themselves exceptions.
If I made a snarky comment to poke fun at a friend over drinks, I
would make sure to accompany it with a broad smile or a wink to
indicate that it is intended as good-natured ribbing (which is not to
say that other devices employed in traditional writing, such as terms
of endearment, are unavailable in this medium -- but can you imagine
your average WASP using a term of endearment when he is barely able to
put forth a smiley? ;-)). The absence of such a gesture is, to me, at
best a sign of stuffiness.
There is the converse, of course: one can easily make disparaging
remarks and tack on a smiley as an easy disclaimer.
--ravi
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