I mentioned emoticons in a recent post, and on Sunday, 7.29., the New York Times ran an informative piece on the evolution of these helpful little critters. I'd like to say that the Times piece was inpsired by my post, but of course that would be a stretch.
The piece includes a cogent quote by Will Schwalbe, an author of "Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home": "In a perfect world, we would have time to compose e-mails that made it clear through our language that we are being cheerful and friendly, but we're doing these things hundreds of times a day under pressure."
Schwalbe goes on to note that he sees a broadening use of emoticons among adults in "delicate and significant communcations." With that in mind, I'll repeat the contention I made in my recent posting (which dealt with avoiding having your communications misinterpreted). Emoticons are all right, but use them, if you must, only to back up or underscore the feeling and tone that you should try to establish by striving to write clearly and concisely, and then carefully reviewing what you've written.
It's not as hard as you might think. ;-)
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