A note coming from the "everybody has a right to my opinion department".
I basically agree with what Leigh has been saying, despite my use of
emoticons in e-mail. I believe that one of the purposes of education is the
developement of clear and precise thinking and communication. And therefore
educators (used to be known as teachers) should not be encouraging sloppy
communication, particularly science educators where clear and precise
thinking (and therefore communication) is the name of the game. And this is
a constant struggle as the cultural milieu that our students reside in
encourages quite the opposite.
Auf die andere Seite:
If you believe that our youth should be introduced to the e-mail mode of
communication, then perhaps they should see some catalogue of emoticons,
because they will see them and therefore will need to know how to interpret
them in order to understand what message was being conveyed to them.
One further comment:
It is entirely appropriate for Leigh and Rick to give their opinions on this
subject as this is a forum for discussion; even if the original request was
simply for a citation.
And now a couple of wry (rye) comments:
i)
The use of quotation marks around a word to indicate that it is not to be
taken literally is in sense an emoticon and is quite often used in good
prose.
ii)
By the way, the singular of "medium"
is "media".
my two dictionaries, that I keep in my office, tell me that "media" is the
plural of "medium".