That's the thing -- they creep in. It's insidious!
I feel like I'm using them as a crutch, and I don't like that feeling. I suspect I'm going to fall back onto exclamation points, ellipses, and parenthetical asides (my other crutches...!)
Expounding a bit: I feel as though I'm using them as a shorthand, to hint at my tone, like you said. But since it is difficult to convey emotions through text, any smileys I put in will be interpreted slightly differently by each person who reads my response. So I want to force myself to make sure I'm communicating clearly, with or without smileys, instead of falling back on using smileys (and potentially being misinterpreted).
For example, depending on how well a reader knows me, putting a ":)" in a comment could be read as either friendly, condescending, or passive aggressiveness at work. And removing smileys may not help with that, but the conscious decision not to use them will (hopefully!) force me to actually make sure my words say what I mean, instead of what I want them to mean.
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I feel like I'm using them as a crutch, and I don't like that feeling. I suspect I'm going to fall back onto exclamation points, ellipses, and parenthetical asides (my other crutches...!)
Expounding a bit: I feel as though I'm using them as a shorthand, to hint at my tone, like you said. But since it is difficult to convey emotions through text, any smileys I put in will be interpreted slightly differently by each person who reads my response. So I want to force myself to make sure I'm communicating clearly, with or without smileys, instead of falling back on using smileys (and potentially being misinterpreted).
For example, depending on how well a reader knows me, putting a ":)" in a comment could be read as either friendly, condescending, or passive aggressiveness at work. And removing smileys may not help with that, but the conscious decision not to use them will (hopefully!) force me to actually make sure my words say what I mean, instead of what I want them to mean.