I would like to apologize to anyone who was offended by my
humourously intended sixth question.  I should have put a smilie after it,
so that people knew that it should not be taken as a serious question.

 Please, no more smilies! This phenomenon is ruining readers' abilities to
 recognize and appreciate irony, satire, and sarcasm. Will we see smilies
 added to on-line versions of "A Modest Proposal", or put into the

collections

 of Steve Wright jokes? Also, Miss Manners does not care for them. 

     Oh, piss off!






Woops, did you think I meant that seriously? The purpose of smiley's are
two-fold. They can be used to show your feelings about something.
     Also, they can be used to denote sarcasm and such when there is no
other clue. For example, take the above line. If I said that IRL and
meant for it to be sarcastic, you could understand from my tone and
inflection. But, in an e-mail letter, you don't have those to base your
assumptions on.
     Thus, you use the little smily faces.
     However, I am not advocating their use in stories and such, as the
*STORY* should provide details as to how sarcastic it is. Likewise,
Wright jokes, which should be understood as jokes in the first place,
don't likely need them (unless they are the entirity of the letter or
such and he isn't quoted).
     Basically, they have their place, and a mock question after a
string of serious questions is a good place for a smiley face.
     And, if you were being sarcastic, then I, for one, couldn't tell.
--
Ben Kosse bmk7411@cs.rit.edu
BGC Otaku and worshipper of the Red-Eyed Goddess. Member of ShAS.
Anime, RPG's, computers, poetry (read/write), music (listen/compose).
Author of the Bubblegum Crisis theme pack (see the homepage below).
Homepage with anime and other interests. (http://www.rit.edu/~bmk7411)