Does anyone else hate Emoticons?

This is funny. I am one of the worst offenders. And, I am sure I’ve sent you one in an email before.

Even worse than emoticons, is my inability to break the ellipse habit. I wrote so much broadcast copy in the past, I can’t seem to exorcise it from my email and IM writing habits.

So, my apologies. I got through this comment without it. But now, I’ll probably need a nap.

I love that you’re carrying the rant over to other blogs. Clearly this is a deep issue. Counseling might be in order…

Finally, someone else who hate those stupid things. I am glad you posted on this light hearted issue because it made me laugh hysterically. I can not stand those smiley faces that people put on the end of their statements to give it a little more meaning. A lot of girls use them because they think they are cute and adorable. Have you ever seen the bumper sticker that makes fun of the honor student one? I think you would enjoy that one. Robert is an example of this. I have seen him use the smiley faces before in class on the computer. There might have to be a mediator placed between the two of you if you ever got together.

I agree with you about the blogs being a place where we can speak our mind in a less formal matter, but that does not mean put smiley faces and cute colors all over it. That is what a live journal is for. I like that we can post on somewhat what we want on our blogs, unless Robert has a particular assignment for us, but anyone can still see what we write. This can be beneficial or not depending on what you write and how you write it. Some potential employers could read your blog and like your writing style and offer you a job. On the other hand, a potential employer could see your blog and think you do not know how to write at all and not even consider you for hiring. I do think people need to sometimes watch what they say on their blogs, especially us as students.

Wow, good thing I deleted that emoticon I originally placed in one of my e-mails to you last week, Dee. (Please imagine a winking smiley here.)

I actually find abbreviations like LOL and COW to be much more annoying than little smiley faces…I mean, does it really take that much longer to type “in my humble opinion” vs. IMHO (which looks odd anyway).

As with everything else, the key is moderation. One smiley per message, please!

I’m glad you are passionate about such annoyances as emoticons. I’m not a fan of them, I never use them, but I think your situation is a little more serious than mine. Maybe you have been around them longer than I have. Maybe you’ve received them on a daily basis in every email in your inbox. As for me and the little circle I run in, most of my friends hate them as much as I do. Actually, the other day I was having a conversation with a friend about those pesky little things. We were mostly making fun of them, but more than that, we were making fun of the actual word…”emoticon.” What a stupid word. Just say it out loud…”emoticon.” Sounds like some Japanese animation or something weird like that. Either way, I think they should be banned because they are clearly leading people to violent tendencies.

Hah! Dee…I appreciate your passion and hatred for emoticons in electronic communication! I too am not much of a fan for the little things. In eighth grade when AIM was all the rage, I loved them. I practically used one of them after every comment, all due to the fact that AIM gives you about 50 of them to choose from. One for every emotion, I think is what they were trying to achieve with that one. What’s worse is that the newest version of America Online now has emoticons that are animated and move on the screen. Now that’s annoying!

I agree with you, in saying that we should learn to speak our emotions and not rely on a yellow-faced, smiling head. We all are in PR because we have a passion for writing and can do it well, so it only makes sense that we use it.

BUT, I do think that emoticons can have a little, teeny-tiny positive aspect. Because a lot of communicating is done through type (by means of email, blogging, messaging, etc.) sometimes it is hard to determine what someone’s underlying emotion is when communicating. Although type can be much more effective, efficient, and faster than talking via the telephone, type will never be able to thoroughly communicate one’s emotions. One could type something as simple as “Fine” in response to a request, and the receiver could interpret this to be frustration, anger, etc. or it could be interpreted as “sure, I can do that for you.” Sometimes I think people rely on an emoticon to convey their meaning when it would be hard to interpret it solely through text.

However, it would be nice if there was an alternative to the emoticons.

HAHAHA! Wow, this made me laugh. I know NEVER to send a smiley to you Dee. I actually never send those things. I recently got an Apple computer, and it took me forever to figure out how to get to them, so I got used to not inserting.

It’s funny to see how people’s pet peeves for things differ. In a marketing class I am taking, we are learning about consumer behavior and how even if a group is targeted directly, the product might not sell. It’s exactly because humans, no matter how alike, are so different. Obviously, a lot of people love inserting emoticons, since they are so popular. (with my 14-year-old sis and her friends especially) I’m also sure there is some kind of I Hate Emoticons group somewhere out there for you to join.

Thanks for the laugh!

I agree that emoticons are completely annoying. The only one I like is one on Yahoo Messenger that is rolling its eyes, because more often than not, I find myself in need of such an icon while chatting with people sending me too many smileys and ROFLs.

Haha! I thought that this was quite humorous too being that everyone who has any knowledge of the internet knows what “emoticons” are and have used them many times before, even if they don’t want to admit it. One of the main things that I think is funny about “emoticons” are that sometimes if you type in too many of them the machine can and will log you off. When AIM was the big thing back in high school, I vividly remember typing in too many “smiley faces” at one time and AOL logging me off, sometimes it would even lead me to restart my computer! Maybe this means that not only does Dee not like this internet language, but neither does the computer.

Another antic that bothers me about the internet, besides these “emoticons” is chain letters. I receive at least two of these a day either in my email or in my facebook and it seriously annoys me. These chain letters say things like “if you don’t tell 5 people you think they’re beautiful nobody will ever love you again.” Give me a break! Seriously, I probably feel just as strongly about chain letters as Dee does about “emoticons, so please don’t ever send me one of these. The Internet is a fabulous communication strategy and people should use it for knowledge, and in our case, writing skills in order to benefit themselves. Thanks again for venting blogging style Dee, it definitly gave me a laugh.

I think I was in the generation that these “emoticons” (which I never even knew were called that) evolved. AIM was all the craze and now there are hundreds of different little faces. You can have soccer ball faces, sunshine faces that move, flower faces, colored faces and so many more. On top of that my computer makes weird noises at me when people get onto AIM. People also have all kinds of things going on on their screens when they IM me. I think that the teenyboppers are most likely loving the variety but I am extremely sick of it. AIM is a great way to talk to your friends fast but since I have been in college, I have steered away. I will get on occasionally if someone is not answering their phone and I need to find them but I hate the AIM cult and all it entails. It is addictive and silly when you think about it. You said you did not mind the “LOL’ etc.. but those MIGHT bother me even more. I speak English and those are not English, they are codes for English. Just take the extra five seconds it takes to spell out the word in its entirety.

I honestly found this an interesting post, which brought up many things in my mind. First, I don’t find them at all entertaining, but neither do I find them annoying. I’ve become so accustomed to them that I tend to overlook them. I don’t use them outside of the original colon and parentheses, and I only use them for clarification…which brings me to my second thing, the clarity aspect. It is extremely difficult to judge connotation in an email or IM. You don’t know if someone is being sarcastic, critical, joking, etc. The emoticons have provided a way to cross that barrier, at least to some extent. I know many people who are annoyed with them, but I see them as something that you put up with to achieve a better outcome. If you can overlook their annoyance and put up with them, you have less chance of being offended or offending someone else because of the lack of personality of internet communication. It seems to be yet another case of the lesser of the two evils.

Oh Dee, I have read your other post on your blog and I must say that you have toned it down a bit. I see what you are saying about using the “cutesy” little smiley faces while writing…it does seem to create a sense of immaturity about your writing. I think though in some cases it is alright to use such antics, maybe when you are talking to your 12-year-old sister on AOL instant messenger, but none the less there is an appropriate time and place for everything.

With blogs, I think if it is a personal live journal then the usage of these emoticons can be excused, but when writing in a blog speaking of issues of concern or about a company they should be eliminated. It is a turn-off to your writing when you use such emoticons. Your writing loses its professionalism and may be less likely to be viewed as valid. You may loss your seriousness in the minds of the reader, and therefore decrease your credibility.

I don’t think that I see these emoticons quite as bad as an annoyance as you, but I do agree with what you are saying. They can be an annoyance…wasting white space in your posts. So my advice would be, if you are going to use them…use them wisely. Use them when talking about how much fun your day was in a live journal, but not in a post speaking about a company’s new product. No matter how happy the new product makes you.

Who knew that these emoticons would become so trendy today? Although they may be used unknowingly of the consequences, there is a time and place for everything…even emoticons.

Oh, wow! I just googled the term “Emoticon” and over 14,000,000 hits showed up. I was unaware that they are so popluar. There are several stores that sell or allow you to download for free their signature emoticons. However, I was looking for the history of emoticons and I found it at wikipedia.com. Although wikipedia is an obvious wiki, I am going to assume that all of the information is correct.
I must say, I was highly amused while reading wikipedia’s definition of “emoticons.” It stated, “n. emoticon, sometimes called a smiley, is a sequence of printable characters such as :), ^_^, or or a small image that is intended to represent a human facial expression and convey an emotion.highlighter makes skin.”

The part that made me laugh the most was the “highlighter makes skin!” I have never heard anyone state that, nor has anyone ever sent me a smiley face “with skin.” I guess the smileys on AIM can be considered “with skin,” but I would make fun of anyone who highlighted their smiley face on email to make it look like it had skin.

I must say, Dee, that I DO use emoticons every now and then when I am talking with my friends on AIM or the new Gmail talk. However, I will re-think my actions after reading your obvious passionate dislike of emoticons, and I will definitely make fun of anyone who sends me a smiley with “skin.”

And…wordpress obviously automatically converted part of the above Wikipedia definition into emoticons. How appropriate.

Even though I don’t really use emoticons, I don’t mind them as long as they aren’t used excessively. I think some people could tell a story using nothing but these icons. However, using Emoticons is a way to personalize a message and support what you are writing.

The problem with e-mailing, IM, blogging, etc. is that the receiver may decode the message out of its original context. Many misinterpretations occur because someone writes something that someone takes the wrong way. Emoticons help label the type of comment someone makes. Instead of sounding like an insult, putting a smiley face at the end of a sentence will let the person receiving the message know that the sender wasn’t trying to be mean/rude/insulting.

Emoticons are better than using shortcuts like LOL or TTYL because they aren’t transferred into every day conversation. It is so annoying when I’m talking to someone and they start talking in AIM language. My younger sister does this a lot because she spends so much time on AIM. Half the time I wonder what she is saying. There seems to be shortcuts for every phrase out there. If someone doesn’t understand English, TTYL won’t mean a thing to that person. An emoticon, however, is universal. Anyone knows what a smiley face or a sad face means. Symbols are less deceiving than words can be.

Emoticons are fun, cute, and sometimes helpful when trying to get a message across. Just remember, everything is better in moderation.

I’m not sure what this blog is about, but I just did a random search on the words “emoticon” and “annoying” and this is what came up. I can’t stand emoticons. I find them to be juvenile and passive-aggressive. It seems as though anyone can post the most hostile thoughts on a message board, but then follow it up with a wink or a smiley face to let the reader know that no harm was intended. Have people become too lazy to write a coherent e-mail, so that they have to resort to pictures to get their points across without offending anyone? Not to mention how much these things slow down my already slow internet connection at work, which I have absolutely no control over. So frustrating!

hi smilies r da bomb ya heard sooo shut up u losers peace im outty much luv me

[Note from the Editor:  This comment comes to us from a computer at Oley Valley School District.   All comments come with the sender’s IP address.  Well, this one is from a Pennsylvania K-12 school site.  So, we have public school readers.  And this is what they chose to share.  Their email address, by the way, is toerules1992(at)A-really-big-provider-Of-diaLup-services(dot)com.  Just thought I’d share it with you.]

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Althogh I never use emoticons, I can see where they would be useful for expressing emotion in a loss of words situation. But,you are correct in your thoughts that we, as students and especially as professionals, should learn to express ourselves through the sometimes lost art of WRITING.

This makes me laugh! I agree with how you would like to see people write and not put silly emotions…Sometimes I think they are alright if you are talking to a seventh grader on AOL. I do find it a little immature and “cute.” I have to say I’m sure I”ve used them before. I would just have to be careful when and where they are used. You never know when a smiley face can come back to haunt you…

OK. I know I was completely against emoticons in my last post, but i think I’ve found a new respect for them.

I think these little buggers are definately alright to use in social and professional situations.

OK. I know I was completely against emoticons in my last post, but i think I’ve found a new respect for them.

I think these little buggers are definately alright to use in social and professional situations. I know sarcasm shouldn’t be used often, but let’s say it is necessary. Would you not almost have to type a colon and right parenthesis to convey your sarcasm?

Also, some people get offended quite easily, especially when taking orders. A simple request can look like a demanding threat when typed in conversation. I think a tiny smile at the end of a sentence can keep real emotions to a minimum in the online community.

hi i wanted to say how do you download smiley fases

i love them ;-(