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Left parenthesis, hyphen, colon

Left parenthesis, hyphen, colon published on 2 Comments on Left parenthesis, hyphen, colon

Originally posted on ReadWriteWeb.

So now I know. And I have to live with the knowledge.

I’m married to someone who… (okay, deep breaths; bring down the pulse)… who keys in smileys… without a hyphen.

Ten years of marriage, and it’s only yesterday that I discover Alex is perfectly willing to deprive her emoticon-people of a critical facial feature. “A smiley? Really? Exactly how freakin’ happy are they going to be without a nose?!”

Maybe we’ll move past this somehow, and one day we’ll move from :-( to :-) again. Maybe.

…Hey, wait a minute – losing the hyphen gains me an extra character in Twitter, doesn’t it?

Awesome. Marriage saved. :)

(N.B.: Today’s cartoon is inspired in large part by my seven-year-old daughter, who’s been drawing these amazing people with smileys as faces. Props, Li’l Sweetie.)

2 Comments

On my BlackBerry, I have auto-correct programmed to replace "hy" (the keys behind which the colon and the closing parenthesis are hidden) with :) If I wish to frown, thus :( I use "ht".

All well and good, except that TweetDeck has no auto-correct! So I have, on occasion, put HY or HT in a tweet, which sort of spoils the effect. HT

That's a pretty handy tweak for inveterate emoticon fans, Levi. And you're making me wish the iPhone offered a more Twitter-friendly keyboard in its Twitter apps… not necessarily for smileys, but for things like the "@" character.

iPhone developers, is it possible to customize the keyboard in your apps? And if so, have you thought about placing the @ on the main keyboard?

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