:X

[davidn]

I've actually tried to stop using emoticons quite so much, as I can't help but feel each one is a small admission of my failure to accurately convey mood through text. But they're just too useful - and when I started my attempt to replace the occasional ":)" with the "!" I felt I really meant, people said that they couldn't imagine me using exclamation marks in speech.

I tend to limit myself to a sort of linear range from joy to horror, :D :) :( D: with a boggle-eyed D% reserved for real emergencies like witnessing a chapter of Hatoful Boyfriend. The only one that I could admit to as being slightly non-standard is ":X" - I'm not sure where it came from, but I had been convinced that it meant saying something secretive, that you didn't want other people to hear (or were acting that you'd said by mistake). But as I discovered today, Pidgin interprets it - rather unexpectedly and embarrassingly - as a doe-eyed expression of besottedness.

Or it could mean that you're Miffy.

Comments

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Wow, an emoticon-based case of AutoCorrect embarassment? That's...new. o_O;

[premchaia_pre4]

You can steal Barry's chair. c.c

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

What drives me bonkers is that it's interpreted by the client— so if there's several possible programs a person could be using, you don't even know what emoticon they'd be seeing…!

[davidn]

...I've just realized how many of my friends I may have accidentally flirted with over the last several years. They've been very good at not saying anything about it, if it's happened!

[dr-dos.livejournal.com]

Recently at work I had been IMed by my boss asking for me to show him some new feature or other we implemented and wound up telling him "Be there in a minute~" rather than "Be there in a minute!"

I then corrected my punctuation and hoped my boss wasn't familiar with the sing-songy/flirty nature of the tilde.

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

I use a tilde almost every day! :o

[davidn]

I didn't know that that was what the tilde was used for, until ravenworks started punctuating everything I said in the Stumbling Through videos with it and made me sound all camp! What a horrifyingly perfect place to accidentally put it :)

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

I can't help but use emoticons! I've come to rely on them a little too often, now I'm starting to use them in work environments, too. I find that I have to re-read a lot of the things I write to ensure 1) I have correct grammar/spelling and 2) that it doesn't have a tone that could be misinterpreted. From what I can tell, I have a horribly toneless form of writing.

God help me if I were to ever write a story or something. To have to not use emoticons would be like pulling teeth.

An odd translation that I've been seeing is in e-mails - for some reason "☺" comes out as "J" in a lot of cases.

[davidn]

I've seen the "J" as well - I think it's a Microsoft Outlook thing. I never liked how it corrected ":)" to the Wingdings smiley character (that must be where it comes from) as I feel it makes smileys look even more obvious and out of place than they would otherwise.

[premchaia_pre4]

Yes, it's a Microsoftism.