How to write a smiley
Maybe it’s just me, or maybe I share this feeling with other people. What, you ask, what? I can’t stand how people write smilies…
Perhaps I’m overreacting, but why are people massacring their poor smilies? Or expressing them so they look like refugees from a leper colony? To me, a smiley should always consist of three elements: eyes, nose and mouth!
Therefore, I declare all smilies that look like this extinct:
🙂
Please, give your smilies a nose! Stop scaring kids! 🙂
PS. If you want to post smiley examples in plain text in your comments, make sure to have them on a separate line to avoid image escaping when posting them (they will still be escaped in the preview). DS.
Well, that's bad, I agree. But even worse in my opinion are those who write their smileys upside-down, like (-:. After all, we're not in Arabia, and we write and read from left to right.
Duh, Robert. Smilies don't deserve noses. :p
SilentWarrior – I'm from israel and in hebrew you write rtl (:
That was a bad post :) hehehe.
I'm with Jens – Smilies don't deserve noses :) .
(Don't ask how i did that ;))
Nose??? To complicating… 😉
🙂
It's to much work to type the dash for a superfluous nose. If you're a touch typist you have to lift your right hand and slightly rotate it counter clockwise and stretch up to type the dash character. People who use smilies know what they are when they don't have a nose. Smilies don't need nodes 😉
Thank you! That needed to be said!
Even worse: *_* (and its endless variants).
Oops. I guess Textile (or whaterver) swallowed that. That was supposed to be:
I think people more often use :) than :-)
My non-scientific evidence:
:-)
http://www.google.com/codesearch?hl=en&lr=&am…
Results 1 – 10 of about 121,000
:)
http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=+:%5C)&sta…
Results 11 – 20 of about 354,000
(and yes there are false positives…)
I used to write smileys with a nose, and I was a bit annoyed by the no-nose smileys, too. Now I've accepted it and embraced it.
I think the main reason for no-nose smileys is that several popular forum applications use colon+right bracket to insert the normal smiley, so people got used to writing their smilies that way.
You're 100% right. I also think japanese Emoticons (Sorry, this part of the article is not available in the english version) are abhorrence!
Ahhh shaddap =P
Microsoft have got The First Smiley online… sorry to say it has the nose. I just use 🙂 which is easier.
jap's style are more expessive ^^
and the longer eyes is cuter , such as =)
I agree. Only Japanese smileys are allowed not to have noses ^_^
Zomg, so many variations of 🙂
Let’s all proclaim 😀 as THE smile to use. It’s got bigger teeth than a wolf you Red Riding Hood! 🙂
Robert, the smileys that are used to replace textual smileys on your very own web site does not have any noses! 🙂
Tanny,
That's an interesting perspective: keyboard layout. In a Swedish keyboard layout dash (-) is the key next to colon (:), so it's very easy. 🙂
wioota,
Yes, but the most common thing in the world is that the majority of people do things "wrong"… 😉
Gustaf,
Oh, the irony! 🙂
But then I have to say that image smiley representations are totally different (although I naturally resent the smiley images in WordPress… ;-)).
I'd give smilies a nose, for the the fact that the nose is between the eyes, not below. 🙂
Switch the bloody things off then! 🙂
Olly,
Ah, but I like images, I just resent that they don’t have a nose. 🙂
Oh, I forgot to mention, empirical evidence aside, I think the nose on a smiley just looks silly ;^)
Anyways, I was here to get the usage details for elo (an Electric Light Orchestra fan or just coincidence?) so I best stop paffing around and skedaddle.
Believe it or not, there's also an accessibility issue here, at least for Mac users: VoiceOver, OS X's built-in content-speaking utility, is preconfigured to recognise smiley and wink – but only with a nose!
wioota,
Yeah, go for ELO now instead! 🙂
Nick,
Great, the case is closed then! All people who care, add noses to your smilies now! 🙂
Ok Robert…
:~)
Hmm… I must be a weirdo, cause I always give my smileys a nose but not the anorectic version. Mine always have a nice round nose:
:o)
Feels more jolly for some reason. Maybe I'm just trying to compensate for my tiny little bud… ;o)
Rowan,
Oh, that's just bad… 🙂
Müfit,
That's a weird looking smiley.
(s)
moahaha!
i like my smilies 2 have a pimple like this…
:-.) lol! :D!
michael,
Ha ha! The Cindy Crawford-style!
lol yeh 🙂
ok…i prefer those noseless smiles 🙂 😀 😉 atd…
the nose is unnecessary there cause emotions are not expressed by nose but by eyes and mouth….but if someone insists on the nose thing so write it like this =o)…these are just cute 🙂
michael,
Glad you agree! 🙂
globalsan,
Oh, but I'd like to disagree. The nose is an important part of how it is being perceived. 🙂