It's difficult to get tone in e-mails, or text messages. Sometimes a sender will use a one-word answer to save time. But the receiver may then take offence. "What do you mean 'fine'? Don't you have time to send me a proper message?"
So senders have developed a new way of expressing emotions electronically - the emoticon. Now, if someone asks how you are, the answer "fine" can be qualified by an emoticon. This is a series of punctuation (or similar) marks which, if you twist your head 90 degrees, so that your face lies flat on your shoulder, you can easily interpret. Fine ;-) expresses a cheeky wink and a smile - a flirticon if you like. Fine :-( means the sender is not really fine at all.
Emoticons have evolved since their beginnings as a plain old smiley face :-) - even developing their own abbreviations. If you want to use :-o to show you are shocked, but can't be bothered to key in three punctuation marks, type :o and delete the hyphen.
Or perhaps you want to describe what you look like. You could tell them that you :-# (wear a brace), :-{} (have distinctive lipstick), 8-) (wear glasses) or perhaps you are (:-) (bald). Or maybe all five, (8-{#}). Emoticons can even be used for business transactions. For example, :-$ means put your money where your mouth is.
Is it unfair to suggest that those who use emoticons are making up for a deficit of emotion in their normal lives? I put this to someone who sends me such text messages. The response was :-> which I thought signified laughter. But it turned out the > represented fingers.
