E is for Emoticons

When I was thinking about a blog idea for the letter E, I had a hard time narrowing my choices down. My Facebook family was very gracious in giving me excellent ideas. Easter, employment, eggs, electricity, emotional intimacy, energy, empathy, elections, education, epiphany, ethnicity on baseball's opening day, and a few others. I really appreciate the support and the variety of feedback.

One of the ones that stuck out to me, was the suggestion by an ex-boyfriend of mine. He suggested that I write about the very popular form of text messaging expressions called emoticons.

Emoticons, or emotes for short, are funny and cool smiley icons used for email, IM, FB, text messaging and chat. I personally use emotes way more than I should and for a long time I was annoyed by the presence of emotes.
For example, is it okay to get a particularly offensive text message or email, followed by a :). Does it take the harsh undertone of the message away ? And what exactly does it mean when someone responds with a :/ or :D? I learned that the first is a straight face and the other is a big smile.

Ever since converting to the IPhone, I too have been a fan of the new emotes available on the latest Apple device. Sometimes using an emote is easier than saying, "You make me happy" or "I want to kiss you" or "I'm winking at you."

Either way, to hear those sentiments every once in a while is still a good thing!