Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 22:34:35 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: Ryan Thompson <ryan@sasknow.com>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Who is this Charlie guy in /etc/passwd? Message-ID: <20020613223435.A23313@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20020613140653.00d64340@localhost>; from brett@lariat.org on Thu, Jun 13, 2002 at 02:08:14PM -0600 References: <20020613080114.N506-100000@ren.sasknow.com> <4.3.2.7.2.20020612214125.02fa4dc0@localhost> <20020613080114.N506-100000@ren.sasknow.com> <20020613163826.A1543@lpt.ens.fr> <4.3.2.7.2.20020613140653.00d64340@localhost>
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Brett Glass said on Jun 13, 2002 at 14:08:14: > At 08:38 AM 6/13/2002, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > > > ``I cringe when I see them,'' says the movie critic Roger Ebert, a > > hatitue of CompuServe, interviewed via e-mail. On the other hand, he > > adds, ``smileys might be a real help for today's students, raised on > > TV and unskilled at spotting irony without a laugh track.'' > > Ebert fails to recognize that what the smiley is substituting for > is intonation, which (in most cultures) is what disambiguates irony. You forget that written language existed for millennia before smileys became widespread. Also, irony isn't the same thing as humour. I think a smiley is particularly inappropriate for true irony or sarcasm, which is often meant to be cutting or insulting. If it wasn't meant to be cutting, the writer should make sure it doesn't read that way in the first place, rather than tack on a smiley as an afterthought... I'm not totally anti-smiley, I often use them myself. But I don't like seeing them thrown in every two sentences. So I can sympathize with those quotes. Rahul To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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