Re: CHAT: Intonation surrogates in online text

On Thu, 8 Jul 1999, Raymond A. Brown wrote:

> At 2:21 pm +0200 7/7/99, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
> >
> >If Kibo hath given thee smileys, it must be because he didn't want
> >them himself. But he is still giving us EXCESSIVE CAPITALIZATION and
> >lots of exclamation marks!!!! Let's take those instead, so Kibo can go
> >back to not using smileys.
>
> Ach - I'd rather have smileys   :)
>
> After not using the darn things, I've now taken to sprinkling the odd
> smiley or two around since I found that some remarks which I thought no one
> could possibly take as anything but a joke got taken seriously.  The
> smileys do help in this respect.  But I've discovered the 'winky smileys'
> can get quite the opposite reaction to what's intended - it does seem winks
> have more culture-specific meanings.
>
I seldom use anything but ;-) - I find that if I use a Wodehousian prose
style to indicate irony, winking or even just playfulness people think
I'm horribly condescending ;-). Anyways, multiple exclamation marks are
a sure sign of a deranged mind! (Cf. Terry Pratchett, the only author
I know of with a sense of humour within the same order of magnitude as
Wodehouse, but a rather less polished style.) Using ALL CAPS is a strictly
no-no ever since the Charlemagne discovered the Carolingian minuscule!

Ummm. Is this still about conlangs? Er, does anyone have a distinc ironic
register available in their conlang? Charyans are seldom ironic, most often
just playful!

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt