My favorite examination of smileys came from Dave Barry in the book, “Dave Barry in Cyberspace”. The whole book was great, but the thing that stuck with me most was his rephrasing of the Tale of Two Cities:
It was the best of times 
It was the worst of times 
And still you did…
That could be a fun game. . .
From Hamlet
I am but mad north-northwest; :mad:
when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw, 
Is this a dagger I see before me? :eek:
…The wrong play’s the wrong thing…
I don’t necessarily agree, but so what? Can’t you say the same about, forinstance, punctuation? And is it really so awful that some people are better writers than others?
This I agree with. It’s another tool to help communication. That’s a good thing.
I hate them. I’ve always hated them. I don’t really know why I hate them, but I hate them. I hate certain ones more than others. I just take each one a certain way and they are all pretty obnoxious. My least favorite one of course is the green one with the toothy grin and closed eyes. With the type of statement it usually follows it says to me “I made a funny! I’m adorable!” Coming from a bunch of allegedly intelligent middle aged people, it makes me want to set my hair on fire.
I’m not sure how related this is, but in my mind it seems connected to being unwilling to write in books (not to dredge up the same topics from another thread). I used to never do it, and still won’t in copies I care about, but since studying lit I realized how much they can improve my reading and thought process. It’s just another example of something that seemed really offensive to me at first, and I came to accept. I do agree with TheLoadedDog in that I often prefer the text-only ones most of the time.
…and I just realized that my OP should have said omniscient narrator, not omnipotent (although now that I think about it, it might make an interesting concept for a story)
I don’t like them and hardly use them, but I concede that conversation via text is fraught with possibilities for misunderstanding of tone and intent, so there are times when the judicious insertion of a wink or grin emoticon eliminates ambiguity as to whether someone was being ironic, farcical, or just mucking about.
:smack: is downright useful, or at least it is when you make the number of stupid mistakes I do - how can you convey :smack: any more concisely and clearly?
I furiously despise the rolleyes thing though, especially in debates.
D’oh!
Also, ain’t it fun being present at the birth of a new language?!
How did you generate that? Surely not by hand?
Or being offensive.
A member may assume from his experience of another’s sense of humour that a particularly deadpan comment is acceptable by the recipient (and would be if uttered face to face) but when translated to the screen it may come across as unpleasant and unfunny.
This kind of post really can generate misunderstanding and needs care in its language and style of delivery.
Or a wink.
Quite - particularly that, as set apart from all the other jokey possibilities.
I feel like a great percentage of people’s problems with me could have been cleared up with a wink smilie but it’s not my responsibility to personally untwist the panties of a bunch of drama chasers.
Oh and the eye rolling smilies are infuriating.
This places a reliance on people to automatically assume the best possible interpretation of what you are saying. It doesn’t always work.
I don’t have any problem with you at all.
Who are you anyway?
Yeah, entirely a manual process, sad to say. An Excel spreadsheet with graph-paperlike cells and a magnified smilie as the background helped the process along. Once created, it was a matter of waiting for a smilie thread to come along. Probably should have waited for one less serious/contemplative, but I had an itchy trigger finger.
It’s not important. Just one of the thousands of peopel at work today with the irish flu.
For real? Wow. My hat is off to you sir (or madam).