miukumauku

My friends take the piss cos I never ever ever use them in anything. I just think they're feckin stupid. I hate trying to show I think something is funny on the internet. It's one of those things that comes under the heading of insoluble problems.

No, not really. I hate the indiscriminate use of @ on club flyers, for example.

But you'd be N@halie.

I am a one man acronym generating machine. Only Emma understands them. It is generally infuriating for PIMC.

I felt like using emoticons and too many !!!!!! when I was writing my dissertation.

keats roXoR shelley suXoR haha :P

et usw = the future of academic style, I hope & pray

Pete makes me and him sound like C3PO and R2D2.

I hate the indiscriminate use of @ on club flyers, for example.

Too true! It's one thing to use @ in the context of someone's email address, but it's another thing to see it used in flyers and ads. It's just a trying-too-hard attempt to look modern.

But then again flyers and ads have a lot of problems with with cutesy spellings and the like --- I can't stand "tonite", etc...

Which one of you is R2D2 and which one of you is C3PO

I am obviously R2D2 as I am the cute heroic one that no-one can understand. Emma is the prissy, cowardly, shiny, posh CR.

The Wire is particularly infuriating in its use of @ in its gig guides. Their last Xmas special issue had an end-of-year writers' highlights thing, and it was all "Fennesz@The Spitz" etc. and I wondered, did they all actually put that and think it was kewl or did some of them put "at", and then I thought how pissed off I'd be if I was a Wire writer and put "at" and it was changed to "@". Such petty irritation is probably why I would make a rubbish Wire writer.

Sod off Pete.

What Pete means is he's the unintelligible one who can't get off his back and Emma's the one who's more like a human being.

Thank you Tim for chivalrously leaping to my defence.

I have always been annoyed by the @ sign because it always seemed so pointless. "At" is two letters! The word is easier to write than its symbol and looks far less untidy! Aaargghhhh! Now, the internet has made it a Useful Thing, but I still get annoyed by it in non-internet contexts, for the slightly different reason that it looks like a very pathetic attempt to look all modern and "hey, look, we're cybersurfing the information superhighway!" (Use Other Words Please, 1994-1997 Computing Articles in Bad Newspapers Edition).

I like acronyms, though. I think using acronyms for everyday phrases (acronyms for technical terms and so on are fine) and emoticons in proper letters or pretty much anything handwritten (I guess exceptions could be made for a quick post-it note to someone who'll definitely be familiar with them) looks bad, but I overuse acronyms and emoticons chronically on the internet, especially on IRC, where I have the added fault of hardly ever attributing my lines, so I rapidly become incomprehensible.

I loved using "fnar" for "for no apparent reason" (a phrase I say a lot, because it describes most stuff I do, really), with cute but confusing duality with Viz-style Finbarr-Saunders-esque expostulation, but I stopped because I realised that nobody else knew that that was what I meant. Six months later I'd got myself out of the habit and all those who'd previously been bemused by it started doing it. Sigh...

@ is not easier to type than "at," but it looks nice. I try not to use emoticons and never use acronyms in letters, but I use them frequently on the Internet. I guess I just don't respect you people enough to cleverly convey my meanings.

I like to put DBV before a phrase when I wish it to be read as if I am speaking with a Deep Booming Voice.

I think I might have invented this but I cant be sure.

text that should be clicked on ">see here

oh, it really means 'Dollar Bill Validator'. Now me sad.