Trading emotions with emoticons

I just chatted with a friend over the MSN. I probably did like 50 'Lol's over the timespan of 10 mins, a few dozen ,') and some :P. Ok, maybe I have exaggerated abit. Buy you know wat I mean: when enough is enough for emoticons?

I am not saying that emoticons are nuisances. Contrary to this, I actually encourage people to use more of it, together with proper punctuations, so as to drive across a genuine emotion of the state that the writer is in, or is made to be in. I will leave the punctuation usage to another post for some other time.

So genuine emotion is the operating word. As you would know, non-verbal conversation cues take up

85% of the overall message that you want to bring across. verbal cue only take
up 15%.

It's not hard to recall a situation when a genuine joke was taken as an offensive sarcastic remark.

Although technology created a vast variety of communication medium, people are using brick and mortar style of interaction. One thing that lacked behind is the human touch. A simple handshake or the assuring look in the eye and the pat on the back is exchanged with some emoticons or a *pat*.

I personally have the habit of overdosing my chat sessions with 'LOL's. I cant help it but to mind-laugh everytime I use that. It's not exactly an emoticon but I guess it brings the emotion across.

So remember to inject a healthy dose of emoticons in your next sms. Just don't use a <3 on the email to your boss.