In formal writing, does the smiley go before the period, or after? :o I usually put it after, but I’m just not sure. Does it matter if the last puctuation is a period, question mark, or exclamation mark?
If you’re quoting someone, does the smiley go inside the trailing quote, or outside? Does it depend on whether it’s their smiley or yours?
It is too clear, and so it is hard to see.
The mind boggles at the concept of the smileys going anywhere in “formal writing.”
I can see it now, from Herman Melville:
“It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather
pldennison, that’s a great idea!
LADY MACBETH.
Out, damned spot! Out, I say :mad:! One- two -why then 'tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie :mad:! A soldier, and afeard :rolleyes:? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call
our power to account ? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him :(?
Damn simulpost. Drain Bead beat me to it.
From a copy editor’s standpoint, the smiley would be considered a part of the sentence and should go within the quotemarks or the end-punctuation.
From an art director’s standpoint, though, they often LOOK better when outside.
Has anyone written to William Safire about this?
That’s okay, I sense this thread will grow to Guy Stuff proportions in our butchery of the classics!
That assumes we know any classics!
*And the raven, never flitting, :eek:
Still is sitting, still is sitting :eek:
On the pallid bust of Pallas :eek:
Just above my chamber door! :eek: *
“To do her justice, I can’t see that she could have found anything nastier to say if she’d thought it out with both hands for a fortnight.”
Dorothy L. Sayers
Busman’s Honeymoon
Why, I can smile :), and murder whiles I smile :eek:,
And cry ‘Content’ 
to that which grieves my heart 
,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears ,
And frame my face to all occasions. 
:o 
I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall :rolleyes:;
I’ll slay more gazers than the basilisk :mad:;
I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor ,
Deceive more slily than Ulysses could ;),
And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.
I can add colours to the chameleon :eek: :mad: :),
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages ,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school :mad:.
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown ?
Tut, were it farther off, I’ll pluck it down :p.
– 3 Henry VI
\\| |/
=== '>
I never saw a Purple Cow :eek:
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you anyhow, :rolleyes:
I’d rather see than be one. 
– The Purple Cow, Frank Gelett Burgess
This is just personal preference, but I usually skip the period entirely if I’m ending a sentence with a smiley.
Smileys go after ?s and !s, though.
I like () () & (.) (.) are also excellent:
Two hands upon the breast () (),
Two hands upon the breast () (), and labour is past.–Russian Proverb.
I’m a magazine editor, and I now have authors giving me manuscripts with smilies in them. The language, if not the world, is coming to an end.
If you must smilie, put 'em before ending punctuation and inside quotation marks, says I. Smilies are not a substitute for ending punctuation :P.
Catrandom The Editrix
Seems to me that used to work
Catrandom
There once was a man from Nantucket,
Well I put them after the punctuation. Separated by a space, because otherwise the period get’s tangled up in the picture if you’re posting somewhere without this sophisticated smiley makers. Outside the ending punctuation - I don’t consider the smiley text, so it doesn’t need punctuation itself.
But then I have never liked the rule on ending punctuation for quotes and parentheses. If the punctuation is part of the quoted material, I insert before the close quote. If the quote is just around a phrase or word, though, the punctuation goes outside.
Ex.
“The quick, brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.”
Someone just called me a “nincompoop”.
(Go jump off a bridge.) That’s fun (really).
See the smiley. 
This one. ;^)
FYI, the reason periods (and thus other punctuation) is supposed to always go inside the quote comes from the early days of the printing press. They were worried about that trailing period getting worn out or broken off by extending on the edge, so they made the rule to enclose it with the quote, even when it wasn’t part of the quoted material.
So you’re saying that, before the printing press came into common use, ending periods went outside quotation marks if they weren’t part of the quoted material?
Do you have any pointers to any pictures of pre-Gutenberg documents that support this?
Sorry, left my pre-Gutenberg documents in my other jacket.
Smilies disabled.
Not so fast, you mucko!