{"id":14403,"date":"2009-04-01T16:26:19","date_gmt":"2009-04-01T22:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=14403"},"modified":"2009-04-01T16:26:29","modified_gmt":"2009-04-01T22:26:29","slug":"death-of-the-emoticon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/04\/01\/death-of-the-emoticon.html","title":{"rendered":"Death of the emoticon?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doyce writes that he’s noticed a distinct drop<\/a> in uses of emoticons in online writing. He suggests that, just as emoticons originally came up as a means to deal with new, quick, widespread use of electronic communication (chat, email) that encouraged quick, off the cuff, informal, and misinterpretation-prone text, our growing experience with the medium has reduced the need.<\/p>\n

\n

Are people less sarcastic\/ironic\/satirical today? Seems unlikely. Sure, most of us use a smiley here and there, but – at least for me – it\u2019s often to take the sting out of a particular harsh statement; less \u201cthis is a joke\u201d than \u201cremember we\u2019re all friends here.\u201d My opinion is that we (the global internet-using culture) have so immersed ourselves in text-based communication since those early digital days that we\u2019ve collectively relearned how to clearly communicate nuance in the medium, as well as how to detect<\/em> it.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve become better readers. And writers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I think there’s something <\/em>to that.  Certainly in more formal online writing (e.g., my blog), I definitely use them less (hardly at all — I actually notice it when I start to). <\/p>\n

On the other hand, I do still use them in some business and personal email, esp. emails that emulate instant messaging (“k thx”). I use them in IMing, too, though, and others still seem to do so there as well. But I don’t use them on Twitter (they take up precious characters).<\/p>\n

Doyce’s hypothesis sounds plausible, but I’m not sure my own data points make it that definite? Thoughts?<\/p>\n

\n

Now if we could just get people to stop typing \u201cLOL\u201d as though it\u2019s an actual word.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’ve always preferred a wry, “Heh.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doyce writes that he’s noticed a distinct drop in uses of emoticons in online writing. He suggests that, just as emoticons originally came up as a means to deal with new, quick, widespread use of electronic communication (chat, email) that encouraged quick, off the cuff, informal, and misinterpretation-prone text, our growing experience with the medium … Continue reading “Death of the emoticon?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-and-language"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11340,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/09\/18\/smiles_everyone_smiles.html","url_meta":{"origin":14403,"position":0},"title":"“Smiles, everyone! Smiles!”","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 18-Sep-07 6:42am","format":false,"excerpt":"It's the 25th anniversary of the smile emoticon.\u00a0 :-) Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes \u2014 a...","rel":"","context":"In "Writing and Language"","block_context":{"text":"Writing and Language","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/writing-and-language"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7729,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/08\/26\/its_not_a_bug_i.html","url_meta":{"origin":14403,"position":1},"title":"It’s not a bug, it’s a feature","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 26-Aug-05 10:52am","format":false,"excerpt":"A review of Google Talk that I've heard echoes of elsewhere: Google Talk has launched, and I'll give you my mini-review right now. 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I could actually see using some of these...","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10933,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/14\/smiling_faces_smiling_eye.html","url_meta":{"origin":14403,"position":5},"title":"Smiling faces, smiling eyes","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 14-May-07 9:42am","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent study indicates that Americans and Japanese read body language and facial expressions\u00a0differently -- in particular, that Americans pay attention to the mouth, while Japanese focus on the eyes...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}