emrath@uiuccsb.UUCP (08/22/83)
#N:uiuccsb:9900012:000:698 uiuccsb!emrath Aug 21 03:33:00 1983 One of the first few times I saw this ----> :-) it was explained that it meant a light, joking, or facetious statement was being made, since it was learned that in net land, such statements are often easily misunderstood and can ruffle feathers. Okay, so I knew what it meant, but I figured that surely it should be paired with (-: and bracket the statement(s), sorta like quote marks. I mean, what's a ) without a (? A while later, I read the explanation that somebody picked :-) for this purpose because it looks like a sideways smiley face. Now I see these things all over the place, and every time I see one, I can't help but see that sideways smiley face - AND IT JUST CRACKS ME UP!
tag@tty3b.UUCP (08/23/83)
The origin as I recall, was in Reader's Digest *many* years ago, in one of
their little anecdotes: The aunt of the person who wrote about it used
the sequence -) to denote "Tounge-in-cheek" in typewritten letters.
I guess it means about the same thing on the net.
As long as I've got your attention, what other conventions have sprung up?
Reply briefly by mail, and I'll post if enough of you are interested.
- Tom Gloger Teletype Corporation (ihnp4|otuxa|we13)!tty3b!tagsdo@u1100a.UUCP (08/24/83)
This discussion is about ways to indicate lack of seriousness in written
correspondence.
In the May 1983 issue of Communications of the ACM, a letter from
Eric Weiss introduced the notation of placing a small, lower case,
italicized "joke" in the upper right hand corner of such letters.
The notation was used again in the July issue on a letter by C.J. Date.
Note that the lack of such a notation on this item as well as the lack
of the :-) notation indicates that this is for real.
Scott Orshan
Bell Labs Piscataway
201-981-3064
{pyuxi,houxm,ihnp4}!u1100a!sdodebray@sbcs.UUCP (Saumya Debray) (08/26/83)
I'd always thought that the "(-:" (or any of a bunch of similar sequences)
was a shorthand for "tongue in cheek":
( - :
| | |
/ | \
/ | \
/ | \
cheek tongue ???presley@mhuxj.UUCP (08/27/83)
Doesn't it have something to do with the elimination of gang wars in Chinatown? V zrna "Gbat va purpx". -- Joe Presley (...!mhuxj!presley, harpo!presley)
CSvax:Pucc-H:aeq@pur-ee.UUCP (08/30/83)
The explanation of the :-) symbol which I saw years & years ago (when there were wolves in Wales, and before I had ever seen a Unix [tm] system), was that it translates to "tongue in cheek" (it looks sort of like that, doesn't it?). -- Jeff Sargent