On Tue, 28 May 2002, Sabri Oncu wrote:
> Not at all. We need to figure out a way to add emotions to these > e-mails. The other day I responded to an e-mail I received from > my wife. She was asking me to add a few lines to an e-mail she > was sending to a common friend. In my response I made a joke that > costed me two days of tension at home. Her perception was that I > was insulting her in the presence(!) of a friend and this was a > perception of someone who knows me since 1983. Oy, do I know that the hard way. But this is why smiley faces were invented -- they indicate the presence of a joke the way a question mark indicates the presence of a question. By signalling tone of voice. They look dumb and make you feel obvious (since not signalling a joke is a fundamental rule of good joke telling). But it's much better than sleeping in the doghouse. And after you write a few billion of them they begin to fade out and look like punctuation marks. Maybe some day they'll get stylized they way hieroglyphs became letters. )) Michael
