Enlighten Your E-mail with Emoticons :) ;D

Smiley Emoticons

(Source: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-illustration-4499969-emoticons.php)

Everybody tend to be in a rush. Open their e-mail, read it fast, reply, and click 'send' button. Unconsciously, we might sending the wrong signal to the readers. We could not expect people to read the way we read. People in a good mood might read differently with the people in a bad mood.

Will Schwalbe, a New York Publisher, said that e-mail is not just an e-mail. E-mail is actually a a symbol of how you treat other people. You do not need a formal e-mail or sentences to make people feel good reading your e-mail. Some of them might do not even know how to write a proper e-mail. According to Netwriting (2007), you just need to keep your e-mail brief and to the point. Certain e-mail might looks boring and dull with just text in it. Therefore, in 1982, Scott Falham introduced emoticon that has smiley face (Wikipedia 2010). Picture could say a thousand words, that is why we love emoticons nowadays. An emoticon of cute yellow smiley smiling is better than a word smile. Putnis & Petelin (1996, pp.297) stated that all texts contain explicit or implicit traces of other texts. Certainly, simple emoticons would brighten your simple e-mail. Nobody knows when your smiley emoticon might cheer up someone's bad mood :)

Using Emoticons in Instant Messaging (MSN)

(source: http://www.sherv.net/article106.html)

References:

Davis, A n.d, Emoticons and Email Etiquette, ABC.net.au

Netwriting 2009, The Art of Writing Good Emails, viewed at June 15, 2010, http://www.netwriting.co.uk/2007/05/21/the-art-of-writing-good-emails/

Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney.

Wikipedia 2010, Emoticons, viewed at June 15, 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon