Well, I was very impressed by the contribution of rjblanchette about criticism, and I agree with everything was written in the post.
But one think made me think and led me to open this post: ambiguity when using punctuation and emoticons.
Our DS friend told some emoticons should be avoided because they may not be interpreted in the way we would like them to be. If I think about it I realize it's incredibly true. This may be the case of:
:-D
:-P
;-)

or punctuation such as "!!!" "..."

Given that I agree in total and I will definitely avoid to use them as from today, I would like to explain their meaning in our italian culture, so that I can clarify why I (and other italian users) used them in some of my past posts or comments.

:-D means surprise, or a great smile
:-P means I am joking, or making irony of myself, autocriticizing
;-) friendly smile

!!! means an emphasis on the exclamation, used to express a great surprise or enthousiasm.
... gives suspence or gives a pause to the sentence, gives rhythm to a long sentence or connects two sentences

Oh well, this is a little ashaming but I feel it is necessary to clarify it because I respect the community and want to stick to the international netiquette.

This wants to be a space where to post your ideas about it or a suggestion for the admins for them to evaluate the possibility to post a list of emoticons/punctuation which it would be best not to use because they are not universal in meaning!

So if you happen to find ;-) in a post do not think you are dealing with a don Giovanni!

I hope you will have fun reading this (at this point I would have certainly added "...") I hope this can be helpful for my italian friends and for the DS community, provided that (unless otherwise stated by the moderators or the members) I will make an effort to only use very traditional emoticons and to avoid our typical italian punctuation !

Sarah

wow Sarah, I use lots of those emotions, almost in every post I make.
Here in Portugal those emotions that you have refered mean the same thing as in Italy, maybe it is in all Europe.

Do they mean other thing in USA or in any other part of the world?

I hope nobody has interperted me wrongly.

nope..they mean the same so far

i actually have found it is the words not the emoticons that cause some confusion

for instance..just a week or so ago..someone wrote that my wolf looked "ridiculous" in my charcoal project..i naturally took a lil offense as ridiculous over here, means just that ridiculous, foolish, silly, stupid even..

but ernest told me that this person was from someplace like vietnam and the word ridiculous means to them to smile or make one smile,,or something along those lines..the person did not mean to be insulting or mean, it was just a misunderstanding of the word used.

Another website I belong to is for computer programmers, and we have many, many folks from India there. English is widely spoken in India, but it's actually a sort of "Indian English" dialect. There are some words and phrases that are used by all speakers of that dialect, and their meaning is understood, but American or British English speakers are sometimes confused.

One of these is "I have a doubt", which means "I have a question." To the Indian English speaker, it has no connotation of uncertainty; it's doesn't mean "I think this might be true, but I'm not sure." It literally means "I want to know (something), can you tell me please?" If an Indian English speaker says "I have some doubts about Microsoft Word", they mean they have a list of questions they need to ask about that software. But an American means "I think Word sucks, and I don't think it's good enough for my purposes!"

Another one which gets people angry sometimes is "even I" to mean "me too" or "either." As in someone says "I can't understand how to do that." And the Indian English speaker says "Even I can't understand that." To an Indian English speaker, that second sentence means "I can't understand it either." But to Westerners, it means "I am smarter than you, so you'd think I could understand it, but I can't, either." Some people get really insulted when they see that!

what a releif, I love emotions

Thanks Ernest for explaining this, I did know there are some terms or words that are diferent from some contries to others like USA or Canada to Australia, England and South Africa, but that Indian dialet is rather confusing and can easily be missunderstood.

Kay, "ridiculous" here means silly too, so I can imagine what you felt when you saw that good thing you now know what the person meant

Note that I did not say I have any personal knowledge that "ridiculous" means "makes me smile" in Vietnamese. I only suggested to Kay that that is one possible very bad translation. I know Kim talked to that person and they apparently didn't mean it as an insult, whatever they meant to say!

Let me give you an example of Dunglish! Dunglish means that Dutch (slang)phrases are literally translated to English.

Something like a famous phrase now in a dutch commercial: "For this time I will see it through the fingers". Tell me what you think it means. (LOL already).

Cees

PS In Holland we even have a book of famous Dunglish quotes.

this time I cannot aford this??? I will have to pass this one????


what also hapens is some people use the online translatures for a hole text, and normaly the translation is very very bad.
I sometimes use them, but only for a word at a time, and sometimes there is not a proper translation.

Kaly,

I will give you a hint: Go to this site and click on the link under the pricture of Hotelkamer (extended version). It starts in Dutch, but when you see the commercial you will understand at the end what it means (I hope).

it's fun to hear common misunderstandings! Now I feel better (...) !

As a Moderator of this site trust me I have seen everything taken wrong ..a simple comment gets twisted around or a smile like this ..when I use it it means just what it is ..a smile ....I think we need to all understand we are all from different places ...some from the USA ...Italy ...India ect ...we could not possibly tell everyone to not use emotions...its part of the world wide net ....what i do many times is look over to my left and see where they are from and say ...I must be misinterpeting this and smile and move on .

I'm not quite sure I got it, but I beleive it means: for this time I will forgive you.????

if its not you can keep LOLing

You got it right Kaly.

Regards,
Cees

Kim , I agree with you on this!

sorry Kim, we must have posted at the same time, I missed yours .
Yes that is true, we are all from diferent places with diferent habits and not everyone understands well english, so it better to double check first

Cees, thanks.

I believe that visual emoticons were created to be international symbols of expression in a virtual world where you cannot read body language or hear tone of voice.

They are of course open to interpretation, just as happens in real life conversations when one person takes the wrong meaning from someone's comments.

People often use emoticons out of context and they become almost habit, inserted into places where they are not appropriate or necessary.

I believe that emoticons aren't the best way of getting a point across and can be confusing and to be frank downright annoying sometimes. I would sooner someone just tell me what they want to say rather than pepper it with cartoon faces. However I believe that emoticons have become part of the whole shorthand of internet communication that will continue to bastardize language as a whole.

We will see a whole generation of individuals who are unable to construct sentences or communicate thoughts clearly without writing in short sentences, use abbreviations for phrases that few understand, and are unable to understand the use of punctuation, capitalization or grammar. I see this now in students I have working for me casually. Their ability to write and communicate is compromised due to continual 'chatting' online or in text messaging.

I agree with you. especially teenagers and kids, and it is very bad because one day they will not know how to write their own language properly.
Her in Portugal our alfabet does not have the letters K, Y and w, yet most teenagers use them everywhere, they substitute every "c" or "q" for "K", and also use "x" instead of "s" , and they don't only do this in text messages, but in written exames at school. Some of them cannot write a sentence correctly. That is a very bad sign for their future.