posted
Why does OSC use <grin> instead of the nice graphic - which is even shorter to type - smiley? In fact, come to think of it, I've never seen him use any smileys at all.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Old school, yes ... before the Internet became available to ordinary civilians; before the web; before , before rofl, there were <grin> and <wince> and other such methods of showing intent. And since they are actual words, I prefer them. Besides, it's easy to overlook an emoticon.
However, for a brief period in posting here I would use the little menu of emoticons at the bottom of the form. But after using them a bit, I apparently forgot about them. So there ARE some posts of mine with symbols attached ... so I hope no one will waste time searching for them in order to say "See? He DID use them!"
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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I don't see why you think it easy to overlook emoticons, though. They're coloured, they have little animations - they fairly leap out of the screen.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Interesting. I am reasonably confident I was on the intenet before you were, or before practically anybody else on this forum. I don't remember people using *word* or <word> back in the day. I first noticed that after AOL chatrooms became popular. But back in the eighties we used to use :) and :( and ;) and even 8) all the time. (Note the lack of hyphens.)
Actually, because of that, I always appreciated that the smilies here didn't use hyphens. The hyphens only seemed to come in with AOL.
(I can appreciate your preference for actual words, though.)
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Whe did CompuServe get rolling? In the 80s? I was just reading some stuff from one of their published author-mod's, and she was definitely using the <word> construct -
What I find even more amazing is that we could be writing the history of the internet, already. Does that strike anyone else as quite odd, when most of history actually took more than a generation to get to be history?
Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote: I first noticed that after AOL chatrooms became popular.
It depended on the service. On Usenet, emoticons or parenthetical emotions in brackets were all the rage. On many BBSes, particularly ones that also hosted MUDs, you'd see things like *winces* or /em winces (for obvious reasons). (I remember that on at least two early services, typing something like /em winces would produce the line "<Tom Davidson winces.>", with brackets. I think it's very likely that the tradition sprung from that source.) It IS interesting to note that for practically as long as real-time Internet chat has existed, some extra-textual method of stating or visualizing an emotion has been used -- despite the fact that these are not common in letter-writing or email.
When IRC became huge, it managed to combine the emoticons of the Usenet crowd and the /em winces of the MUD crowd. And that whole newbie influx from AOL back in the day leapt full-bore into IRC and Usenet, which exposed them to those two methods of emoting -- and made them "mainstream" for the 'Net.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I first encountered (and immediately understood) the emoticons, 'way back when the Internet was reaching the end of its innocent stage. That would be... 1991... when we were still using Gopher and Usenet allatime.
Posts: 89 | Registered: May 2005
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Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
smiley? In fact, come to think of it, I've never seen him use any smileys at all.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
, before rofl, there were <grin> and <wince> and other such methods of showing intent. And since they are actual words, I prefer them. Besides, it's easy to overlook an emoticon.![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
