Re: e-mail symbols

[palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer)]

> Does anyone have a list of the symbols people use at the end of their
> messages:  (;  .)   (= ........?  My wife wants to teacher her
> middle school students about email and I haven't seen a list to
> give her.

My daughter calls them "emoticons". They are intended for use by the
group of people whose prosaic abilities range from the inarticulate
through the illiterate. It should be noted that competent writers of
the English language are capable of conveying such information as
emoticons are intended to convey in well constructed English prose,
even in colloquial forms which need not consist entirely of complete
sentences. I'm no Mark Twain, but he didn't use emoticons and neither
shall I. Though I will likely never rival Mark Twain I will keep his
writing as an ideal to inform my own efforts.

The best thing your wife can do for her students (and the thing my
wife and I did for all of our children) is to encourage and commend
their use of proper English. Email is a wonderful medium for practice
of the necessary skills. I'm glad she is doing it, but she should
use the attraction of email to the benefit of her students. She
should not confer an implicit approval on this device by codifying it.

Leigh

(One phrase I never use in my postings unless it is absolutely
necessary is "in my opinion" or, worse, "IMHO". It should be evident
that what I write is merely my opinion, as in the present case. It
would be an insult to my intended readers' intelligences, and an
expression of my own low self esteem, to state that explicitly.)