Re: OT: The basis of faith (Was: Re: Children should wear bicycle helmets)



C

Chris Malcolm

Guest
Mark Thompson <[email protected]> writes:

>> In some other groups there is a preference for encouraging posts
>> written in a style that can be understood, by normally intelligent
>> people at least, without these additions.


>In a text only medium that's trying to be conversational, concise and
>without ambiguity, a smiley makes things a heck of a lot easier. It takes
>the place of facial expressions and intonation. They allow my posts to be
>written faster and to be much shorter. You may not like smileys, but I
>find 'em useful, and, if they annoy you, will use them more.


You make the presumption that unlike the rest of the text, a smiley
will not be used ironically. Since it's much easier to write (or not
write) a smiley than it is to control involuntary facial expressions
of emotion, and the problem is the possible ambiguity in the rest of
what has been written, this seems a very questionable assumption.

I suspect that smileys give the naive writer and reader an illusory
feeling of security amid the uncertainties of interpretation :)

--
Chris Malcolm [email protected] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]
 

Similar threads