Smiley Emoticons - Good Or Bad?

If you think about emails you have read in the past, there may have been some that were a little confusing about their meaning. Since the words are typed, you may not have known if they were meant as a joke, or an insult. Putting a little laughing smiley at the end of the sentence would let the person reading it know that the thought was meant to be funny and make them smile.

In addition to being a part of emails and blogs, smileys also became a quick way to convey a feeling in text messages, where people are often charged by the character used in the message. Typing ': )' is much quicker and involves fewer characters than typing out the words "I am happy".

Initially, these emoticons were great additions to online correspondence. They were a fun and colorful bonus to an e-mail, text message or blog post.

They were fun and harmless, right? Just a cute little thing to put on an e-mail or blog post?

Then something happened. Instead of being an accent to a correspondence it seems that smiley emoticons became just as much a part of communication as words themselves.

This is where some people say the emoticons went to the dark side and started to become more problematic than cute.

While in casual correspondence smileys are cute and fun, some people seem to not know when they are too much and where they should be left out.

More and more companies are finding professional correspondence from employees or even those who want to apply for a job filled with these smiley emoticons.

It seems the smileys have become such a major part of the lexicon of teens and those in their early 20’s they don’t know when it’s time to leave the smileys behind and put forward a professional appearance.

Many companies are being forced to start from scratch with their employees, showing them what’s appropriate and what’s not in professional correspondence, seemingly taking things back to elementary school, all because of emoticons.

This kind of lack of control with smileys has some people wondering if they were a good thing or a bad thing to have been created.

The answer may be some of each. While smileys can in fact be a great way to make sure you have clear communication in a friendly e-mail to family or acquaintances, the importance is making sure that people learn the difference between professional and casual conversation and when it’s ok to add fun smileys to those messages. Casual correspondence is free game, but keep smiley emoticons out of anything that is meant to be professional.