We live in dark times. And nothing makes me more convinced of this than the escalating use and growing acceptance of smiley faces in correspondence.
My new boss, who I’ve decided to dislike even though I’ve never met or spoken to her, and who is probably a really nice person who I will never give a chance, can’t seem to send an email without several emoticons beaming out from between her sentences and gluttonous number of exclamation points. U R 2 NICE!!! 
she wrote in her first email to me, making me wonder how I could “B 2 NICE” when I was in fact 2 shocked 4 words.
Sure, I will pardon the stray or well-used emoticon. I will pardon emoticons that are produced by the very young or very old. I will even pardon emoticons in forum responses and short virtual notes. But emoticons are a slippery slope of weird facial expressions, and, like most indulgences in life, they should be used sparingly and thoughtfully.
One day you might find yourself adding a single smiley face to the end of an email in order to cement your tone. But the next day you might, like my new boss, be wholly unable to go three lines in an email without breaking out the super smiley or the winky-smiley, all garnished with splashes of exclamation points and ellipses. It will be mere days before you find yourself replacing words with numbers - like some1 and 2day - and mere days after that before you are a homeless heroin fiend, the kind of person who coughs without covering their mouth or doesn’t put the cap back on the toothpaste.
Is it really that hard to express yourself clearly with actual words? Must we rely on weird yellow hieroglyphs, which are totally so 5,000 years ago? There are lots of words in this language and — surprised emoticon! — many of them express emotion. In fact, words can even be strung together in certain sequences that imply very specific tones and shades of meaning. For example, do I need to put a 
here for your to understand how I feel on the subject? Or do you get it?
To prove my point further, let’s take a look at how a classic author has survived without using emoticons. Would timeless words from the past be even more powerful and moving with emoticons?
Let’s try the opening of A Tale of Two Cities:
“It was the best of times 
it was the worst of times 
it was the age of wisdom 
it was the age of foolishness 
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity 
it was the season of Light 
it was the season of Darkness 
it was the spring of hope 
it was the winter of despair we had everything before us we had nothing before us 
we were all going direct to Heaven 
we were all going direct the other way 
“
(Hm. I have to admit even I’m a little surprised that there’s an emoticon for “incredulous.”)
Yes, you could argue that emoticons clarify tone, which is sometimes hard to convey over short business emails. But I still think that the vast majority of the time it’s a crutch that is for the most part repetitive. More than that, though, I think that they are often not used sincerely. Who knows, though, maybe my defense against my new boss should be to honestly use emoticons in my emails. They would look something like this:
Attached is the spreadsheet you requested. 
Or:
No, U R 2 NICE!!! 
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November 27, 2007 at 5:26 pm
seattlegraphix
Somehow over the last year or so, i’ve fallen down this slippery slope. I end up spending much of my time in instant messaging with clients or employees throughout the day and because of that, I use them pretty regularly throughout my conversation. It’s hard to curb once you start.
Just be greatful you’re not one of the nerdy folks who walks around saying “LOL”.
Great post.
J.
http://seattlegraphix.wordpress.com/
November 27, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Melissa
Amen, sister. I try very hard to not use emoticons in “real” correspondence (as opposed to IM, wherein I am constantly and probably annoyingly using emoticons and lol and brb like the above-mentioned heroin-fiend). I have found some success in delineating separate areas for separate kinds of writing, much like separate areas of speech. For instance, I do not refer to my boss as “dude”, nor do I tend to drop the f-bomb to my student workers. Unlike my regular life.
November 27, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Erin
You failed to incorporate my favorite emoticon, :\
November 27, 2007 at 6:25 pm
fightingwindmills
*chuckle* *shrug*
(in a van, down by the river)
November 27, 2007 at 6:29 pm
erin
That passage from A Tale Of Two Cities makes me want to punch the smilies in the face.
I agree, delineation is important, something my students utterly fail to grasp. My issue is more with text message-esque spelling more than emoticons though. I told them the first day of school that using 4 instead of for, prolly instead of probably, or any of the other little idiot text-message cousins would earn them a big fat automatic F, and I don’t even teach English.
November 27, 2007 at 6:50 pm
B.J.
If the Second Amendment gives us the right to bear arms, I think we should have the right to use those arms to shoot people who use emoticons or other IM language. That’s how strongly I feel about this. My road rage barely approaches my writing wrage when it comes to writing complete sentences above the level of a 14 year old girl. Especially in business or any other formal setting. As a TA, if I get an email with this shit in it, I delete it without reading and reply with a message “Rewrite this like a grownup if you want me to read it.” jk ur gr8 lol
November 27, 2007 at 7:07 pm
jvalways
anyone who would write an email to a coworker (future or otherwise) and use the number 2 in order to avoid typing “too” is immature and unprofessional. and then, to top it off with a smiley face is plain pathetic.
my guess would be that this woman is insecure and really wants you to like her.
November 27, 2007 at 8:00 pm
SS
I completely understand others resistance and rage regarding emoticons. They seem to be further proof that our society is becoming more stupid with every passing generation.
However, symbols do already play a role in our current writing system. Take punctuation for example - commas, colons, and even the dreaded exclamation point all add additional meaning to the written word. Classics such as the ampersand, figures representing types of currency, and mathematical operators are all considered acceptable representations of written words.
I would say that despite our resistance, emoticons will eventually become part of formal written speech. Alas.
November 27, 2007 at 8:16 pm
april
Those who use winking smiley faces should consider this fact:
1. In Nigeria a wink is a signal for children to leave the room.
November 27, 2007 at 8:36 pm
jen
i don’t believe your boss really sent that email. really?!? was she trying to be funny? this needs to be investigated further…
November 27, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Anonymous
You are kind of brilliant.
That Tale of Two Cities passage was hilarious.
Emoticons have a place - they belong in IM conversations or the dreaded text message. They do NOT belong in official business or education emails. Ever.
November 27, 2007 at 11:22 pm
rebecca
*^.^*
November 27, 2007 at 11:22 pm
rebecca
>.<
yay little asian emoticons!
November 27, 2007 at 11:47 pm
seaswell
jen - oh yes. just today i forwarded one of her emails to ben due to the incredible word-to-emoticon ratio.
ss - sure, symbols are important and, really, that’s all letters are. and you’re probably right that they will become more acceptable over time. but it doesn’t mean i have to like it.
jvalways - i think she is a little insecure. she’s around my age, which makes things kind of weird. and she’s being thrown into a new job and with a new boss, just like me. she’s also, like most people in my department, a former salesperson, which takes a certain kind of personality.
bj - ha! no, UR GR8!
melissa, seattlegraphix - i, too, am guilty of using a smiley or two in IM. i wonder why that seems more acceptable to me.
November 28, 2007 at 12:28 am
Mitsu
There’s a time and place for everything. The e-mail that your boss sent you makes her seem like a 14 year old girl. Quite unprofessional. I can understand emoticons in IM, a lot of times, I throw them in when someone’s messaging me and I have nothing to say. There’s also the odd one on my blog, but they have no place in actual correspondence.
Meow (&)… that was supposed to be a cat emoticon, lol!
November 28, 2007 at 12:58 am
Rachel L
Oh my god, this is the best blog post in all of history!!!!!
November 28, 2007 at 2:06 am
Jess G
Great post…I love how you used the emoticons in the Tale of Two Cities passage. My Mom has a tendency to get a little crazy with the emoticons whenever she emails me, but it’s cute when she does it. Using them at work is an entirely different story, though. If your boss is spending time considering which emoticon works best in an email about a spreadsheet attachment, maybe HER boss should be giving her more work to do…
November 28, 2007 at 2:30 am
amh
A former salesperson? Oh, just wait for it … endless cheers, exclamations points, and increasingly high pitch tone as the end of the sentence draws near the end. Your world will be full of endless cheer and excitement.
November 28, 2007 at 4:43 am
Anonymous
Great post! However, as somebody mentioned, I think that there are two separate issues: emoticons and substituting numbers for words. The latter is unforgiveable unless you are writing the title of a Prince song; the former is sometimes forgiveable, although never in a professional email.
November 28, 2007 at 7:37 am
Insufferable Know-It-All
In today’s e-society, not only is vocabulary being lost, but grammar as well. How many e-mails have you received lately that use paragraphs? Or ones in which dialog receives a separate paragraph for each speaker? Full sentences are being replaced by the shortest of statements…without real words. Do children even know what a thesaurus is for or that it shows different words with similar meanings? Or is everything just “GR8″?
I am convinced that the next generation won’t be able to speak or read the English of their great grandparents’ generation. Most of them (the ones who don’t speak in “text”) don’t know how to use inflection properly: Have you ever? Like, talked talked to a teenager? And have you realized? That every phrase? Ends like a question? Until they get? To, you know, the end? And then it stops? And everything is connected? In one long sentence? Connected? By the word and? This drives me crazy.
I realize that this is a bit (I suppose that is an exaggeration…) of a tangent upon the topic (and I apologize for being so verbose), but emoticons are just one symptom of the lost English language. Welcome to the e-future (and that, folks, was sarcasm).
Insufferable Know-It-All
November 28, 2007 at 2:44 pm
emiry
It took me a while in my first job to get used to people who sat less than two feet away from me emailing me questions instead of just popping up over the cubical to ask me directly. It made me want to throw paper balls over the wall with the magic answer.
But yes, the emoticons, the extra punctuations (!!!), the substitutions of letters for words (how r u?) drive me up the wall! (OMG!) I understand that we Americans spend more time at work than most other people in the world, but is it really that hard to write professionally when we are getting paid for our correspondence? Of course, I’m probably mocked for using proper grammar in text messages!
November 28, 2007 at 5:30 pm
ApK
your writing about emoticons made my day, and I really appreciate your use of literature to illustrate how words really are better when not peppered with little yellow faces - you nailed it! thanks for the laughs.
*fights urge to add laughing smiling emoticon to end of comment*
November 30, 2007 at 7:03 am
Laura
Yes, I too have fallen down the slippery smiley slope of late. There was a time when I used to abhor them, but now I am certifiably dependent upon them. I have been known to Google for hours, yes hours, seeking the most perfect smiley to express my tone.
It is not a fun road.
November 30, 2007 at 7:17 am
Laura
I should add that it all started about a year ago when my boyfriend and I began using them ironically in our emails to one another. And then it just sort of spun out of control at some point. I don’t know when it happened. Now every sentence we type begins and ends with lol, or
or ;).
Dear God, I need help.
I manage to keep them out of all other forms of correspondence, however. But it’s tough. I really worry that my mother isn’t understanding the full conveyance of my intended communication in response to her cute halloween pumpkin forwards and whatnots without any “lol”s or “:)”s.