There are many different Smilies or Emoticons -Some in the Picture form above, and others in the traditional Text

…..:)…:-)…*<;-}=

However - When you use a smiley or emoticon - do people really know what you are saying?  There seem to be many problems in communication / conveying mesasges that arise because of the lack of consistency in the use of smilies and emoticons.  I propose that there needs to be a standard usage across the board.

These devices are relatively new compared to the history of the written English language and different people interpret their use differently.

If you think about when we are communicating with each other in person, much of that communication is not just with the words we say, it is expressed in the way we talk (tone and inflection) about the gestures we use (both facial and with our bodies) how quickly we say what we are saying, and by using the actual language we are using.

If you take away all the visual and audible cues, look at something that has been posted to convey emotion.  If you think about the words there can be multiple meanings attributed to each word (this is what I enjoy about studying the law) - there is also tone and inflection, there is no pace, there is no body gestures, and there is not necessarily any familiarity with who is writing.  The words are supposed to stand on their own.  Some things can try to show the emotion, and meaning to supplement the ambiguous nature of the words and sentence construction - this can be achieved with USING CAPITAL LETTERS or bold or italics to try to show differences or it can be used with the subtle smiley ;->.

I am a big fan of sarcasm.  This may be because of the mischievous nature inside me or my Australian upbringing.  This is one of the most difficult things to convey when you are in an instant messenger conversation - or especially when writing a blog post.  There does not seem to be any standard ways that people can look at your text and see what you mean.  Some suggestions I have for this is to:

• Mention that you are about to be sarcastic (sort of spoils the fun)
• Put a Smiley face at the end of the sentence
• Surround your comment with tags (<sarcastic> </sarcastic>)
• Use italics and assume the people who are reading assume that you are being sarcastic
• You can use the word just joking afterwards
• You can create another blog post after this one clarifying what you meant to appease any angry readers
• Not Be Sarcastic

There are problems with each of these approaches.  The first spoils the fun and people may not understand, the second may be interpreted to be just saying I hope you have a happy day, or that what you are saying is a bit devilish, or that the whole text was sarcastic or people may just ignore it.  Surrounding comments with tags is very geeky and people may not understand the relevance and think you have broken code - however personally I surround sarcastic comments with a * * with people i know.  There is no convention for italics and people may think that you are quoting someone.  Joking is something that has the same problems as a smiley face as this is ambiguous.  I don’t think that anyone wants to post an apology.  And not using sarcastic is definitely not an option (at least for me)

What is the Emoticon etiquette?  There does not seem to be one and I think there should be.  I propose that people put any sarcastic comments in their own paragraph, where they are proceeded with an opening smiley :-/ and closing smiley :-\ meaning that it is sarcastic.  What do you think?? Should it say it all - should it be used for a whole paragraph, sentence - how does one look at it

What do you think? Please post your opinions below.

p.s. I was inspired for this article by the Problogger mishap (

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/10/25/pagerankadsense-clarification-im-not-funny/) where numerous bloggers misunderstood something that I thought was pretty obvious because it was surrounded first by a smiley and secondly by the words joking.

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