Smileys
"One of the problems the internet has introduced is that, in the Electronic Village, all the village-idiots have Internet access." (Peter Nelson)
What's A Smiley?
Email, as a text-only medium of communication, has the inherent problem of conveying emotion or underlying meanings. Smileys were developed to try to avoid misunderstandings and are used to express the writer's emotion. Since not all emotions are happy ones, they are now usually called emoticons.
In order to make any sense of emoticons, you have to realise that they are meant to be faces drawn using keyboard characters and that you need to tilt your head to the left to be able to see them properly.
For example, saying "You're an idiot!" can be taken two ways, either as an insult, or as a joke.
In the first instance, the writer probably wouldn't include an emoticon.
In the second instance, she might write:
You're an idiot! ;-)
Tilt your head to the left and look at the emoticon. It looks like someone winking with their right eye and smiling at the same time.
So, emoticons alter the way in which text can be interpreted. If you feel that there is a possibility that your written words could be interpreted, use an appropriate emoticon to indicate your meaning.
But, please, use them sparingly! Emoticons liberally scattered throughout your messages not only trivialises what you have written but makes your emails very annoying to read.
Some Examples
:-) Happy
:-)) Very happy
;-) Wink
:-( Sad
:-(( Very sad
>:-) Devilish
:-D Laugh
0:-) Angelic
:-P Pulling tongues (joke)
:-o Suprised
:-/ Sceptical
>:-( Annoyed