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Re: e-mail symbols

My daughter calls them "emoticons". They are intended for use by the
group of people whose prosaic abilities range from the inarticulate
through the illiterate.
Leigh, I take exception to this comment. I am neither inarticulate or
illiterate and I use "emoticons" and abreviations like IMHO and BTW on a
regular basis.

It should be noted that competent writers of
the English language are capable of conveying such information as
emoticons are intended to convey in well constructed English prose,
even in colloquial forms which need not consist entirely of complete
sentences.
If I was writing prose, I would not be be sending e-mail, I would be using
a word processor. E-mail has a style all its own. No, it's not prose.
It's a quick and dirty way of sending a message. I could ramble on
forever trying to convey my emotions to you but a :) or :( or :0 or 8) or
even a [:b is much more efficient at getting the point across. It's just
meant as a substitute for the body language and voice inflections of a
regular conversation. Don't be annoyed with them, be happy that the
sender cared enough to let you know how they were feeling.

The abreviations like IMHO and BTW are just that. Long rambling e-mail
messages are annoying to me. Say what you want to say and do it
efficiently.

The best thing your wife can do for her students (and the thing my
wife and I did for all of our children) is to encourage and commend
their use of proper English. Email is a wonderful medium for practice
of the necessary skills. I'm glad she is doing it, but she should
use the attraction of email to the benefit of her students. She
should not confer an implicit approval on this device by codifying it.
I agree, but e-mail is a different style. I'm not saying it's OK to write
like a slob, but it is a different media than regular prose or verbal
communication and the rules get bent from time to time.
--
James Bradford Shue [%p jshue@comp.uark.edu
University of Arkansas Voice phone:(501) 575-6059
Physics Lab/Demo Curator FAX Number: (501) 575-4580
WWW Page http://comp.uark.edu/~jshue