Displaying Gestures

While you are unable to add hand or facial gestures to your words, there are several ASCII stand-ins for gestures.

Smiles.

A facial gestures can be represented with "smiley": a sideways drawing of a facial expression. The most common three are

       :-)                       ;-)                     :-(
   a plain smile           a smile and wink             a frown

(To understand the symbols, turn the page and look at them from the side.)

While people will have slightly different interpretations of the exact difference between the first two, many believe that the leftmost one means "I'm happy" and the middle one means more "I'm kidding". Of course the last one suggests "I’m sad".

A couple typical examples:

    Hey, guess what - I got the proposal done ahead of time!  :-)

    Now, I'm on my way to fame and fortune!   ;-)

The second smiley, the ;-), indicates that you don't really believe that the sending of the proposal will guarantee success. It is similar to but not as fierce a rebuttal as a "NOT!" (from the movie Wayne's World) appended to the end of a sentence:

Hey, guess what - I got the proposal done ahead of time! :-)

Now, I'm on my way to fame and fortune! NOT!

There are a wide range of Smiley gestures available to you, from %P (ill) to >:-< (angry) to :-o (astonished) ;) (winking and happy). They are only limited by your imagination. There is a whole Smiley dictionary out there on the Net if you are feeling uncreative.

Pause Equivalents.

Imagine that you ask someone if you should put the car in first gear while driving 50 kilometers per hour. He looks at you and says, "Well", pausing for a long time, he scratches his head, looks down at the floor, winces, grits his teeth, and says again, "Well", then pauses and says, "The engine might not explode". You'd get a sense of just how bad an idea it would be, while the equivalent text in an email -- Well, it might not explode. gives less information.

One way to express the same feeling in email is to use lots of white-space and typed-out vocalizations of "I'm thinking" sounds, (deliberate extended spelling of words) as follows:

     Weeeellllll.... errr hem.      Wellll, it *might* not explode!!

You can also use white-space to make it more clear which words belong to which clause.

          Do you want to use a left-handed drive car
                       or         a right handed one.

Another trick is to go one step further, and numerically outline your text.

      Do you want to use:
                  1. a left-handed drive car or
                  2. a right handed one.

Creative Punctuation.

Using punctuation in what is called "comic book style" can be a very effective way to show or express emotion. Instead of saying:

    I am a little upset. Why did you hold my report instead of
    giving it to Jim?

I'd say:

        ???! ???! Why did you hold my report instead of giving it
        to Jim ???! ???!

The question mark is kind of shorthand for a furrowed brow or a "huh?". While the exclamation mark is shorthand for amazement and possibly a scowl. The two together tend to suggest astonishment.

There is a long and proud tradition of using punctuation as a placeholder for swearing, e.g. That #%&#$(*!

You will also sometimes see an asterisk in place of important letters, usually the vowel, e.g. That s*n of a b*tch!. (In actual practice, this form of self-censorship is rare; it is more common for people to either use the whole word or omit it completely.)

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