Quote:
Originally Posted by derangedhermit
I think that the purpose of an orthography is to communicate.
If a symbol has a meaning unclear to the receiver, it is not helpful.
It might be more interesting to discuss at what point an author would consider putting a  in a text. This and similar symbols, although not in, e.g., English, now have meaning to a large part of the population. |
In one of my books I insert a series of emails; in such a context I would not have been adverse to using such symbols. I think that, at least the very basic ones, are widely enough known to be acceptable in the right context - but as it turned out I didn't need them. (I deemed that they would, in my situation, have been like redundant adverbs, describing something that was hopefully obvious in the text.)
And while the graphic symbols are easy to recognise, would they appear as graphics in the ebook or as ':' followed by ')' or '-)'. Which brings up the second point. As text, I had always drawn a smiley as ":-)" but more and more places are like this forum where it has been abbreviated to ":" followed by ")". So if the symbol is going to show as text you have to decide which is the form the reader will most readily recognise.