The new full stop?

[Lord Doctor]

🙂 😀 🙁

Is the smilie slowly replacing the full stop? Is it better than the full stop?


Thoughts?

 

[TMF Jeff]

I think it is, and it's better than a period because it also contains an emotional context, adding another layer to the sentence.

 

[Lord Doctor]

They're certainly useful at reducing interpretation 😀

 

[Artoo]

I think it is, and it's better than a period because it also contains an emotional context, adding another layer to the sentence.

I never really thought about it this way, but it interests me.

The traditionalist in me likes to think that it's as bad as writing "lol" at the end of a sentence. The "smiley" often seems to be there for it's own sake, rather than to carry some sort of deep-felt emotion.

However, that's not to say that it doesn't carry emotion. Sometimes it just feels a little...I don't know, insincere?

Thank goodness for the wide variety of smileys out there.

 

[Lord Doctor]

Written words are often employed more than speech, I've noticed. Emails, texting, chat programs. I have to admit that I can be a grammar fascist sometimes, and so overuse of smilies can be irritating.

It's interesting that their use is almost often at the end of the sentence, hence a possible replacement of a full stop. An intresting thought here is that the emotional expression of a sentence cannot always be seen (certainly never clearly) until it's completion. I have never seen a smilie 😀 there for example.

 

[TMF Jeff]

Written words are often employed more than speech, I've noticed. Emails, texting, chat programs. I have to admit that I can be a grammar fascist sometimes, and so overuse of smilies can be irritating.

It's interesting that their use is almost often at the end of the sentence, hence a possible replacement of a full stop. An intresting thought here is that the emotional expression of a sentence cannot always be seen (certainly never clearly) until it's completion. I have never seen a smilie 😀 there for example.

That's true, but I think we know the smiley is coming before we get to it.

I've always thought that languages that start questions with an inverted question mark, like Spanish, are on the right track, letting you know that it's a question before you finish reading it.

But we manage without that in English. We pick up the question mark coming along before we actually get to the end of the sentence, because we tend to digest words, like numbers, in groups.

And especially with a smiley, since it's a picture, it will tend to stand out in your first glance at the entire sentence. Like you probably already know I'm using this smiley. 😎

 

[Lord Doctor]

Evolution of language 😉

 

[Artoo]

Like you probably already know I'm using this smiley. 😎

Pretty much every time you post, I already know that you've used that smiley.

I don't always have to read it, either. 😎

 

[milagros317]

I use them a lot. But I believe it represents a degeneration of the language, a step backwards from the alphabet to pictures. 😱