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In praise of - emoticons.

IT is a strange reality of modern communication that, at times, we must resort to childlike methods to get our point across.

Just as I once embraced all manner of abbreviations as a first-generation teenage internet user (BYB: be right back; TTYL: talk to you later; the ubiquitous LOL: laughing out loud; and, my favourite POS: parent over shoulder), it wasn't long before emoticons – those annoying-looking typed out parts of punctuation used to convey a facial expression – started becoming an everyday part of my electronic communications.