Living with Emoticons

In just a blink of an eye and a right click to your mouse, sharing of feelings around the globe has already been possible. In a mere second of scrolling, you are witnessing individuals' happiness, innuendos, melancholies and miseries in each day of their lives.

It is the emotions that push us to hit those buttons. Most of the times, we burst them all out to social networks and other sites not considering what others may felt about it. Yet it has become the norm that when something happened, you made the world known regarding it.

Even though the internet is the most commonly used in accessing information and enabling hassle-free communication, it has the most numbered possible emotions carried in each message it transmits. Unlike of face-to-face communication where facial and body gestures conveys their feelings as well as phone conversation on the tones of their voices, the posts from the web by the netizens are the most difficult to extract in terms of the atmosphere they wanted to transport. Hence, emoticons are brought up to impart feelings.

Through emotional icons or the emoticons, specific feelings are more exhibited through portraits of facial gestures while bearing in mind of cyber communication. It is usually flashed through punctuation marks, numbers and letters which often automatically changed into small images that correspond to those in other applications. The absence of body language makes it more relevant for the emoticons to serve for their purpose. It represents a clearer picture of a of the sender that improves the interpretation of a statement by the receiver.

There are already thousands of them in the web: open-mouthed surprise, person wearing of glasses, the Pope, head bang, drinking alcohols and so on. With so many things to say, the question is, "what is the use of long sentences and explanations in chatting and social networking?" You can even just make a train of them to explicitly voice out your state!

Accuracy of Feelings

Because of briefness, it is primarily for quick replies and shortcuts. With one single smiley as a reply, whole phrases and paragraphs can be communicated and emotions as well as thoughts are being carried with. It can also help in the averting miscommunication and misunderstandings.

However, emoticons can also be misleading. An attachment of laughing emoticon to a sentence doesn't make it funny just because of its presence. It can demonstrate a sarcastic expression that can annoy anybody. It can also indicate ridicule over people because of the maximum effect of banter for some of them. Though their intention is to clarify potentially ambiguous statement, these emotional shorthand icons can manipulate the tone of the sentence considering the fact that the words used are complete and clear.

Appropriate Applications

According to Paul Andrews, a staff columnist of Seattle Times, "The primary reason smileys didn't exist for so long is that good writers did not need them. A cleverly constructed sentence, finely wrought witticism or deft turn of phrase needs nothing to clarify or punctuate. It's a thing of beauty." Moreover, he added that these are unnecessary in most cases.

Emoticons are informal in nature. Deciphering feelings have become easier because humans can effortlessly read graphical faces based from daily interactions with people from day-to-day activities. These graphical representations are just 'add-ons' for the phrases to convey moods.

The impact of it varies depending on the quality of the text communication and the mind-set of the receiver. However, there is an ounce of overlooking on what type of relationship does the sender and receiver has which must also be counted. Thus, its purpose of clearing up messages is not absolute for all kinds.

The messages circulated within business organizations by the top management and supervisorial ranks are plain and short which do not contains any visuals and graphics. Moreover, they are said to be best put off from formal documents such as business proposals, resumés, memos, etc. The reason was, using emoticons in formal communication may cause the addressee to not taking the messages seriously due to its informal characteristic.

Exploring Importance

Due to its increasing worth, some emoticons are being trademarked basically for private use of individuals and companies. However, because of the intensifying utilization of internet and the constant practice of brevity in cyber communication, there is no assurance that their intellectual property rights are being respected and properly tracked.
Nowadays, you can announce to the world that currently you're drinking coffee and eating lasagna just by few clicks. Everyone will also know that you're feeling guilty, frustrated or blessed. The hashtags has also became viral as part of updates in timelines and pages. You can even cite your current location and take a few selfies (Self-portraits). Nevertheless, emoticons have never been absent while these new applications trend within social networks.

Unconsciously, smileys have always had its position at the end of each post and update. The phrases itself are dull and plain which renders the emoticons' aim to 'add sounds for the music to play'. In other words, what is the sense of all the talks if there are no emotions involve?

Try to post this, [[255800484498056]] or enter in any comment box and see what it means to have emoticons in our lives. 

(c) Karina Yvonne D. Pascua