Abbie's Real Life Blog

Interesting article yesterday in the NY Times about emoticons.

Coincidentally, I used one today for the first time in months and months, possibly even years.  I don’t know why.  I was trying to convey a certain feeling, and felt like it worked in the context without overthinking it.

I stopped using them when I realized that I am usually verbose enough that they’re entirely unnecessary.  If you can’t tell that I’m being amusing or sarcastic or that I’m disappointed without the appropriate smiley-face or winking-face or frowny-face, then I don’t know why I’m emailing you in the first place.

I am pretty down on text-speak too.  I hate communicating with people who confuse they’re and their and there or you’re and your, let alone someone who uses U for you.  I want people to speak in complete sentences and I’m even the kind of snob who will consider people unintelligent if they misspell words.  I know that’s not fair, because some brilliantly educated people are just not that good at spelling, but that’s one of the problems with living in a world so focused on written communications.  It used to be that anti-social introverts had the bad luck; now it’s the bad spellers.  Sorry.

I know all of this is going to become my generation’s gap with the next generation, and eventually I’ll have to resign myself to being a bitter old hag, hanging out on internet forums (or wherever), screaming at kids to use punctuation.

On the other hand, most of me hopes that this kind of thing is just a passing trend, and that everyone will soon realize that full written language is the only way to get a nuanced point across.

But then, I write long blog posts unbidden.