Remember the emoji

I sent a friend a message on Facebook earlier.

Actually it was a comment on a post from a west coast cousin.

Sort of a cousin. She’s a cousin on my wife’s side. So would that make her a “cousin-in-law”?

My comment was meant to be funny but I could see how it was taken as serious. I did not include the smile or laugh emoji. She reprimanded me. Or maybe it was only a suggestion.

Since then, I am careful to include some expression of tone of voice in almost all comments (after all, there aren’t very many) and it invariably ends up with some kind of emoji.

The written word is not like an actual voice call without some kind of emoji, or so I learned.

Emojis can be made on posts by typing a series of characters like (colon close parentheses) for smile 🙂 or <3 which makes a heart, (colon open parentheses) for sad 🙁 or by clicking on the icon of the emoji and selecting a ready-made expression. Some may consider them as substitutes for interjections.  I see the emoji as akin to the text abbreviations like lol for  “laugh out loud” or rofl for “roll on the floor laughing”. They are a little more visual, normally with a facial expression for happy, mad, sad, broken-hearted, surprise or even red-faced for angry.

Are emojis a fleeting fad? If they are, what is next? Am I considered to be an old fogie because I am not up on the latest?

What happened to effective journalism? J-School back in the 70’s didn’t teach us how to write using these things.

Maybe all the snow and ice from the past week threw me a bit off my rocker? It gave me time to think. Social distancing and self-isolation is one thing, knowing I can’t even get out of my own driveway is another.

We did build a snowman. He bit the dust Sunday afternoon but not before we were able to get a picture <3.

It is great to see warmer weather with abundant sunshine.

When you’re finally able to get out and about this week pick up the local newspaper.  Get one before they’re all sold out. Better yet, subscribe .

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