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Miss Understood: No, You Should Not Be Using Emojis in Your Professional Emails
Winkey Smile, Poo, and Clap Hands — Just Stop
As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. That is, unless you make an impression over and over by repeating the same behaviors that, if used one time are perhaps excusable but if used multiple times, are just ridiculous.
I give you the work email emoji.
In truth, even if it’s used one time, it’s pretty ridiculous, but it can be forgivable (sometimes)in peer-to-peer communications aimed at truly clarifying what is otherwise difficult to parse in quickly written prose.
The emoji is the natural evolution of the emoticon first conceived of by Scott Fahlman, professor emeritus of Carnegie Mellon University (full disclosure, this is my alma mater) who originated the smiley emoticon in order to help folks using CMU’s message board distinguish serious posts from those that were jokes. It’s important to understand that at Carnegie Mellon, in institutes like LTI (The Language Technology Institute), where Fahlman worked, we had these early-on post threads that were rapid-fire messaging environments akin to today’s instant messaging sidebars at the office. The perfect place for short snippets of language, sentence fragments, and indeed things like sarcasm such that…
