From the Archive, January 22, 2007. Just in the interest of reusing the Yoda smiley. Believe it or not, I don’t have a lot of call for it in my life. Progress in emoticon world since I first wrote this? Well, my blog automatically replaces colon-bracket with an actual emoticon, which is why I needed to add a space between them in the post in order to demonstrate how we used to do it “old school. . . “
Emoticons have become so much a part of our email / Messenger culture there’s hardly anyone who doesn’t recognize them anymore – with the exception of my word processor spell checker.
For those of you not in the know, here are a few examples of the “old school” standard character type:
: ) – happy face smiley
; ) – wink, or “I forgot to hit the “shift” key”
: (#@*^#) – my mother’s about to wash my mouth out with soap
There’s also a whole range of pictoral emoticons from the purely classic smiley face:
(*smile!*)
to the more esoteric:
(…uh, *Do or do not do. There is no try?* *Smiling, I am?*)
There’s animated emoticons, emoticons with sound effects, talking emoticons… A literally virtual embarrassment of Cyrano de Bergerac proxy communicators, in fact.
I notice, though, that I’m apparently not a big user. I only stick an emoticon in as a reply to someone who’s emoticoned me – which sounds a little like they’re fooling me somehow, huh?
I’m much more prone to an older kind of sign-off, which could probably be called the classic Kiss Off, if that didn’t have a negative connotation.
It’s what we all put on our Valentines in grade school, or ended cards for our Mom made out of doilies. Maybe it’s a little old fashioned, but I like the kiss-hug “xo.”
The best part is that although you only have two symbols to work with – “x” and “o” – the possibilities are endless for a creative soul. With a little imagination, it could be the binary code of goodbyes.
Here’s some ideas of how to get the most from yours:
xo — my friend, I love you!
xox – going back in for a second smooch
x! – peck on the cheek!
And my fave –
xxxxooxoooxooxooxoooxooxoooxo etc… – I LOVE YOU FOREVER AND EVER WITH TONS OF MUSH I CAN’T POSSIBLY PUT DOWN WITHOUT EITHER YOU GETTING PHYSICALLY ILL OR THE CENSORS DESCENDING WITH BLACK PENS IN HAND…
See? Saves a lot of time, and really gets the point across, if you know how to read ‘em.
heather said,
October 13, 2008 at 7:54 am
I make liberal use of smilies. It’s become a bad habit waaaay back in University so I don’t think I’m even going try and shake it.
So Whatcha got for a blast from the past? You may need a whole new series of characters there… ?!~()and * would be appropriate in the right context