I have a grammatical punctuation problem with using smiley faces at the end of sentence fragments in parenthesis. For example:
Let’s say I’m rambling on here in an email to you, blah, blah, blah. Then I want to say something witty that might be interpreted as insulting if I don’t follow it with a smiley face (here is some witty fragment :)). And then, of course, I continue on, and on, and on.
Above I use the “correct” [1] grammatical punctuation structure because I close the parenthesis. But several parts of my personality are bothered by that structure. First, the aesthetic side of me is upset with the lack of symmetry. Plus the smiley face ends up looking like a smiley face with a double chin. Second, a compiler (or run time interpreter) would never let let you use that structure in code. You would need to escape the smiley parenthesis:
(here is some witty fragment :\))
Now that just kind of looks stupid and it seems a little unpractical to write email in a programming language. [2]
So I’m left with only one option – let the smiley serve as a smiley AND the end of the parenthesis:
(here is some witty fragment :).
Is this acceptable? Nice balance, smiley servers its purpose, parenthesis feels closed-ish. Does it leave grammar punctuation fascists (Bryan Cantrill) screaming at their monitor? Does it leave the reader searching for the end of the parenthesis? “IT MUST BE HERE SOMEHWERE! I CAN’T FIND IT! OH! MY! GOD! IT. MIGHT. NOT. BE. CLOSED!” Will I somehow disturb the balance of the universe by opening more parenthesis than I close? I would hate to open some kind of worm hole to hell, just because I didn’t want my smiley faces to have a double chin.
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[1] The Practical Stylist has not yet added a chapter on smiley fact usage so it there is not a truly definitive source on “correct.”
[2] For the record, if I were to write email in code, I would write it in Perl. Java would make you declare a character, word, sentence, and paragraph before you could do anything. C and C++ are platform dependant so my Dad and Mand couldn’t read my email on their Macs. Python would cause all sorts of problems with tabbing. PHP would always produce HTML email, so JB would never read my email. And Ruby, well, I wouldn’t use Ruby just on principle.
I completely relate to this problem, and as I’m unhappy with all available solutions I flop back and forth between them. I think lately I just try to find a way to work the smiley in before the end of the parens.
1. Grandma Ruby does not care for your off the cuff dismissal of Ruby.
2. Perhaps it isn’t the smiley but the proliferation of “witty comments”
3. I actually try to just add a space between the final parenthesis and the smiley, this has the effect of making the smiley clear but keeping parenthetical entropy in check
Glad to know that you’re at least considering grammar as you write…
I am pretty sure (only pretty sure just in case it is not) this is embarrassing, but I have actually stopped trying to force Outlook to send my email as text solely because it replaces ‘:)’ with a funky character from the extended character set, which JB cannot read, but one that looks like a smiley face without having the double parentheses. My next problem is that Word thinks it’s grammatically incorrect and underlines the stupid thing with the dreaded green squiggly line (green squiggly line = “That looks right, doesn’t it? For the love of God, what’s wrong with my sentence?! And don’t you dare tell me it’s a fragment, Word!”).
Personally, this has bugged me for a long time. I usually either leave a space between :) and ) or I just neglect the end ). I take the stance that it is valid because of the rule that allows for not including the end punctuation of a complete quotation when it is the same as the end punctuation of the enclosing sentence. It also depends on how nested your parenthetical expressions are. When I have 2 or 3 levels of nesting, then I feel like all of the parenthesis are required to read it correctly.
On the subject of JB and email, I trust in gmail’s ability to sort it all out and display things correctly.
First, to be a meta-fascist: this is really a punctuation issue more than a grammar issue. Fortunately, I am also a punctuation fascist — and as such, have long been deeply troubled by exactly the issue you describe. In fact, this is a generalization of a preexisting parenthetical issue: ending a sentence-ending parenthetical note with an abbreviation. That is, take the following sentence: “Next time, I hope Cheney schedules a hunting trip with all of his buddies (e.g. Rumsfeld, Perle, Feith, etc.).” Should the “etc.” in the parenthetical note have a trailing period or not? The answer, believe it or not, is unclear: some sources claim that the period should be dropped in this case (and only in this case), while others claim that the period is always a part of the abbreviation, and must accompany it regardless of context. Worst of all, the most concrete sources usually use imprecise language to avoid taking a stand on the issue. (For example, “The Columbia Guide to Standard American English” claims that “abbreviations within parentheses may end with a period” — leaving open the possibility that they also may not.) And most style guides “solve” the problem by killing the messenger (which is usually “etc.”) with admonishments like “‘etc.’ should be used in only the most informal writing; its use in serious writing is strongly discouraged.”
As to the problem at hand: as you feared, your “solution” does indeed leave fascists like me upset — shaken even. (Of course, we spend so much of our lives upset that it’s unclear if being a little more upset even matters.) Should you wish a less upsetting solution, I recommend that you solve this problem in the time-honored way that we fascists have always solved such murky issues: restructure the sentence to avoid it. After all, we might appear to be fascist, but we are ultimately just passive-aggressive; language is simply too complicated to allow for absolute rigidity. (And at the risk of losing my fascist street cred, the fact that language allows for latitude in punctuation and grammar is clearly a Good Thing — it allows language to evolve. But note that that’s “evolve,” not “devolve.”)
You can always just use the cop-out of square brackets.
And what about Scheme as an email language? With all the parens, you’ll hardly notice the smiley [fortunately, the next revision of the Scheme standard will allow for square brackets as a substitute for parens :)].
On second, thought, that doesn’t look so good.
Dammit, the problem is much worse than I originally expected. It seems I don’t even understand the problem enough to realize it is a punctuation problem and not a grammar problem. Caught by the detail fascists…
I’ve also been troubled by this. I’ve resorted to placing the smiley outside of the parenthetical, which I’m sure will not be correct when they nail these things down in some Book of Writing Etiquette 2.0, but I think it is a more forgivable probem that man perpetual use of hanging prepositions. (This is an example of what I’m talking about.) :) Now that’s written it though it just looks like the smiley has horns in this font.
I can’t condone this sort of behavior. Ending a parenthetical with a portion of a smiley does leave a gaping hole and always bothers me. What about your mid-parenthetical smiley’s???? Fine, maybe I overuse smileys but seriously, how do you determine if that happens to be the one that closes your thought? I think that you haven’t in fact ended your comment and I just keep looking for it. Then, I’m really bothered by the period that follows.
I was bothered by this whole issue until I decided to use a space to separate the smiley from the right paren. This allows for a complete face, no seemingly double chin, and that completeness which we can only find with proper grammar and punctuation. You should try it (I’ll bet you’ll like it :) ).