Got my new Harper's Magazine in the mail today, and as usual, turned to the "Readings" section first. I was very interested in the "Stet Offensive" excerpt (re-excerpted here) from questions sent into The Chicago Manual of Style, a staple of writers, editors, and proofreaders everywhere. One person wrote in to ask about the use of emoticons. Because this (mis)use of punctuation marks is very much a turning point in the English language in the digital age, I was curious to see how The Chicago Manual of Style would field the following question, which I too have posed to myself, to the point that I forgo emoticons entirely in these cases (I definitely forgo them now that any html program automatically turns them into stupid cartoon faces...I am, in fact, on the phone with customer support right now—and for far too long— trying to figure out how to turn off the auto-smileys this blog program generates, which screw up the whole point of this excerpt...OK, it's now the next day, and a team of tech support can't fix this glitch-filled blogging software. Argh. We'll call this "smileygate". In the meantime, imagine the following quote with old-school emoticons).

"Is there any standard for the use of emoticons? In particular, is there an accepted practice for the use of emoticons that includes an opening or closing parenthesis as the final token within a set of parentheses? Should I incorporate the emoticon into the closing of the parentheses (giving a dual purpose to the parenthesis, such as in this case ; simply leave the emoticon up against the closing parenthesis, ignoring the the bizarre visual effect of the doubled closing parenthesis (as I am doing here, producing a double-chin effect )..."

Bah, humbug. The Chicago Manual of Style declined to touch it with a ten foot pole, stating that "until academic standards decline enough to accomodate the use of emoticons", they weren't going to take a position in the whole emoticonversation. I admire their purist attitude in fighting the text-messagization of the English laguage (LOL 4 rl, U no grl, ttyl). But equally am I slightly frustrated that sadly, when it comes to this linguistic development, I will have to remain emoticonfounded.

NOTE: Since writing this entry, I seem to have manifested my worst nightmare, and "Smileygate" is now concluded with this e-mail in my inbox today from the Godaddy folks:

"Our Advanced Technical Support has examined your issue and have determined that currently, emoticon settings are not recognized in the write and edit entry pages of Quick Blog. Our development team has been made aware of this and it will be addressed in a future release. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Regards,
Ashley P.
Advanced Technical Support"

 

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