Most of my regular readers are familiar with my use of three dots.  I am of the generation that is not completely comfortable with the use of emojis. Quite frankly, I would have to invent my own. I find them woefully inadequate and they do not represent the emotion I would have at that time. I would only be able to use something that was an approximation. That ain’t me.

At its most basic, writing conveys information. Information can be sterile and while edifying, it really has no emotion. Individual words, sentence length and punctuation do attempt to fill in the gap but they too are inadequate. Communication is approximately 90% nonverbal. 90%! The twinkle in the eye, the upturned corner of the mouth, the slight flush to the cheeks or the bowed head. A sigh, a giggle. These all speak volumes without words. Inflection, hesitation, volume, all of these speak to emotion in the meaning of the words. A gifted writer will convey all of these with their words. A gifted writer. The rest of us just fumble. Hence . . .

Punctuation can help with inflections on sentences or words. Three dots imply a hesitation, a pause. During a face-to-face conversation that can be quite telling. If I have to explain to my readers that my eyebrows were raised while making a statement then that statement becomes unimportant, even amusing. And yet if it is done while we are speaking face-to-face it will emphasize the statement.

Social media has enabled us to stay in touch but it has taken the colour out of our words. Emojis try to replace them with tiny little images which, in my opinion, are utterly inadequate. I also find that there are a lot of anagrams in use. I’m embarrassed to admit that a lot of them I don’t understand. For years I thought LOL meant Lots Of Love. Oops. Now I know it means Laugh out Loud. But there is no dictionary to tell you what they mean! Fortunately, I have friends who take pity on me (I am sure they are smirking although I can’t see it) and they explain things to me. It took me years before I finally broke down and asked what ROTFL meant or SWMBO. (Rolling On The Floor Laughing and She Who Must Be Obeyed) Just in case I’m not alone out here…

Ain’t communication grand!