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Remember when the world communicated only in person or on the telephone? Our facial expressions and voices relayed our feelings without any worry of miscommunication. If you were angry or making a joke it would be obvious by the tone of your voice or the laughter that would follow.

Then along came email, online forums, and chat boxes. All of the sudden people didn't have to really talk to each other using their voices. Forums and chat boxes proved to be useful tools to have conversations with multiple people at once. Sending emails is a major way of communicating in many workplaces or with friends and relatives. All of the sudden everybody became so impersonal.

I know the smiley has been around since the 1960's and the original smiley emoticon has evolved from the generic :) to and and among others, but there are now thousands of animated emoticons to cover all ranges of feelings. There is no longer an excuse for somebody reading your email, forum post, or chat box post getting the wrong idea about what you sent. For example, sometimes on the dads forum one of the guys will post in an attempt to kid around with another dad but will forget to include the appropriate emoticon to go with it.

These usually work to express your ribbing sense of humor and friendship:

If you try and kid one of the fellow forum members and include one of these or maybe feel you need to post then you better know that person well or they might get the wrong idea and send you back one of these or even worse a . Nobody likes to be kicked there.

The growth in use of emoticons is a good thing. Only in the last couple of years have I really found uses for them. Before that I didn't spend near as much time on the computer as I do now and had not joined any forums. Working from home while raising the kids has opened up many avenues for me and one of my favorites is the extended amount of time I can spend keeping in touch with friends in the chat box. Sometimes you have to be careful in the chat box to not complain too much about things or someone will come along and give you the for the sad song you are singing. One emoticon that can combat the sad song violin in the chat box is the , which gets widely used to douse the flames of the smart ass violin player. It's one of my favorites.

Mornings in the chat box usually start with and by the end of the day the beverage of choice becomes . There are a ton of great beer emoticons like and or and they definitely get used like they are going out of style. I'm OK with that since beer is delicious and a great source of vitamins.

I'm sure many of you reading this have experienced the world of the smilies and emoticons, but if you haven't I encourage you to take the time to embrace this new form of communication that does not involve speaking or writing. Let the graphics talk for you! Heck, some days go by when most of the "adult" conversations I have are based solely on nonverbal communication. When somebody asks how your day is and it sucks just reply with a a and possibly a or a if it has been a bad day and you don't want to talk about it. If it has been a great day then throw out a and maybe follow with a if it was rockin'!

So it's time for you all to get on the smiley bandwagon and help promote the universal language of the world. Make friends online, talk about your life, become the communicator that you know you can be. Remember, you can lie in the forums and chat boxes to make people believe one way or another, but if you get caught there is a good chance someone will toss the flag and call you out.

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