
Pause and Effect: The past and future of punctuation marks - diodorus
https://www.historytoday.com/history-matters/pause-and-effect
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nemo1618
One interesting recent development in punctuation is the effect of
emoticons/emoji. The classic example is the :) at the end of a parenthetical,
but more generally, _any_ punctuation mark abutting an emoticon is
unfortunate. Consider a winking emote prior to a semicolon ;); or an em dash
:|—the adjoining mark causes ambiguous parsing. Personally, I have taken to
placing the emote _after_ the period, like so. :D This seems to parse somewhat
better, despite the emote "technically" being part of the next sentence. (Also
note that, for single-sentence missives, as are common in instant messaging,
the period is often omitted.)

Emoji objectively improve upon this situation, because they are pictures, not
punctuation. There is no ambiguity in an emote before a semicolon ; nor an em
dash —so no sentence-rearranging gymnastics are necessary. As a matter of
taste, though, I still prefer the visual look of emotes. :)

(EDIT: apparently HN eats emoji. That seems appropriate.)

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homonculus1
Your real problem is that you're mixing levels of formality--punctuation
doesn't belong to emotes in the first place, of either type. That's a hallmark
of old-person-typing :P

