thing is
human interaction takes a number of non-verbal cues. Even on the phone much is conveyed by your tone of voice. Without those cues meaning and context can be lost. It's the difference between an insult and a friendly jibe. Sure, the argument is that journalists and authors have done fine without them, but they can put stuff like '...he said sadly' or 'he winked'. Real-life conversations do not go like that, and so IM conversations, emails or texts (which are not novels) need something to replace them, or risk misunderstanding.

Although granted, sometimes their use is indeed cretinous and lazy. :)
(cypherspace is not a toaster, Tue 13 Apr 2010, 21:26, Reply)