Expressing Oneself Better and Winning Some Friends Through the Use of Facebook Chat Emoticons
A study shows that emoticons can either temper or boost the emotional punch of what the user writes, suggesting they're not extraneous flourishes in a message, but helpful cues that clarify what the user really wants to convey. According to a 2007 experiment, sad messages have more impact with a :( and joyful messages seem more joyful with a :). In fact, the simple combination of a colon, parenthesis and dash is a closer stand-in for a smile than you...
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