Chacham's Journal: "Smiley"s in parenthesis

I can stand it. I must know! How does one put a smiley in a set of parentheses. Basically, if the smiley is the last thing before the final parenthesis, does the smile (a parenthesis itself) become the closing parenthesis too (like this :-).? Or is another one required (like this :-) ).

The former

[gmhowell]

The smiley closes the parenthetical remark. (You know, kinda like this :)

I think that even goes for non-smiling smilies. (You know, kinda like this :(

The non-smiling smilies always throws me. But I let the smiling smilie close the parenthetical.

Otherwise, your smilie is a fat man with a double chin.

What about an additional space?

[FortKnox]

I've seen them (like this :-) )
With the extra space.

Honestly, I try to avoid it altogether (or just put it just after the close paren) :-)

Re:What about an additional space?

[TechnoLust]

I always try to put it outside the parenthesis. I just can't stand to have the thing open (I consider the smilie a characher unto itsels, so I can't use it to close, and I can't stand to have a half set of them) so I just put it outside. No double chinned smilies for me! I've considered using brackets [like this :-)] but that has other meanings, an I can't just haphazardly start reassigning things. It'd be nice if the slashcode auto converted them to little gifs. I don't think it would tax the server too much. The only problem is, people make them so many different ways.
Eyes can be different :) ;) 8) or =)
Noses can be different or missing. :) :-) :o) :O) :0) or :^)
You can have a moustache :{)
Mouths can be different :-) :-( :-D :- :-0 :-O :-o and others. There are just too many variations. Maybe if they just made the :) and :( turn to smilie and frownie that would suffice.

Re:What about an additional space?

[FortKnox]

It'd be nice if the slashcode auto converted them to little gifs

Pictures = extra bandwidth = more $$$

I doubt you'd see them put in more graphics cause of the hit it'd be to the bandwidth costs.

Re:What about an additional space?

[TechnoLust]

Yeah, but they put in the zoo.pl pictures. I was thinking of something about the size of the friend dot. If you just had a smile and a frownie, they would be cached and wouldn't take up too much bandwidth.

Traditional Holy War material

[Com2Kid]

Not quite Holy War level, but I can remember having this debate back on BBSs.

I prefer to go with :) ) with two spaces after the smilie, this way it is not confused with any thing else no matter what. :)

(Kind of like this! :) )

Outside the parenthesis is the best option I know.

[shimmin]

I partially addressed this in a recent journal entry. It is the logical extension of placing a smiley after the closing punctuation of a sentence to avoid combining the smiley with the punctuation, ala

Are you coming over tonight :)?

I mean, is this a smiley and a question or someone basing a smiley on one of those freaky muppets from Labyrinth that gave me nightmares back when I was short (and yes, I just dated myself).

The only problem is that the parenthesis, being a rather large piece of punctuation, can appear combined with the smiley even at distance, especially in fonts with narrow space characters. Is

I went on a road trip (and you can't possbibly guess where) :)

some sort of "horned smiley" for a partcularly impish grin?

The best I can suggest in this case is to try to arrange the parenthetical comment so the smiley can appear mid-comment.