van11

The use of the internet has long since brought new ways of communication. One of these ways is the smiley :-). Now the smiley has many variations and meanings and people often have personal preferences. Some use :-) others use :). Personally I’m a fan of =).
Using these in a sentence (and when trying to use at least proper syntax and spelling) brings some new challenges. One of these challenges is using smileys in () (you know, like this).

Now normally there are rules for these kind of things and using those would en up with something like this (for example :-)) But this brings problems, since smileys already use the ), and because :-) is something different then :-)), in other words, adding an extra ) has different meaning. I’ve given this some thought and I think I have a solution.

Which is, add an extra space. For example (like this =) ) This gives the clear message that the ) ends the () and that the smiley is not altered. Also, it’s language independent (at least with languages using these characters and syntax ;-) ).

Of course using picture smileys negates this problem, but lately I’m realizing that I use those less and less.