Paul Whybrow
Full Member
Emojis are invasive creatures. Spawned from the manipulation of punctuation marks to make facial expressions in text messages and emails, emojis spread like wildfire with the technology of smartphones.
Emojis have even had a movie made about them, which was voted one of the worst films of 2017, winning four Golden Raspberry awards.
The Emoji Movie - Wikipedia
Usage of emojis in communications is so common, that in 2014, 76% of 1,000 American workers polled in a survey admitted to using them:
Everyone—and your mom—is using emojis at work
To my mind, the use of an emoji is to convey a point humorously, to emphasise my own point of view. They're useful additions to how I communicate, providing the reader with little treats and helping to break up off-putting blocks of text...people's attention spans are diminishing, remember.
The thing is, should emojis be used in formal business letters? What about in blog posts? I think they're inappropriate for serious messages, being too flippant. You wouldn't feel entertained if your oncologist included sad and crying emojis in their email about your cancer scan test results. A blog post examining Nazi concentration camp atrocities wouldn't carry more weight by the use of emojis.
I use emojis in my posts on the Colony, as do many of us, for we've created a convivial atmosphere here where we're supportive of others and able to laugh at our own mistakes. Just recently, I've been reading through old posts I made, dating back to 2015, when I joined, with a view to using them as a basis for content on my resuscitated writer's blog Paul Pens. This will be part of my self-promotion campaign, creating an online author's platform to sell myself and my books to the reading public.
I'm glad that I had the presence of mind, to save my posts in a folder on my desktop, which has made editing them easier. I typed EMOJI in the text, for where I would insert one, but I've been wondering if they're OK to use in a blog.
I intend to run two blogs, with Paul Pens devoted to the world of writing and publishing, while a Cornish Detective blog will be used more to promote my series of novels while examining real-life crimes and fictional goodies and baddies through the ages.
I'm a firm believer in the importance of disseminating information—to help people through life—but, I also like to keep things light-hearted, as it makes what I'm saying more palatable. Judicious use of emojis might help.
I've subscribed to about 100 blogs in the last year, including some from authors whose books I wouldn't normally tackle, just to see how they go about updating their site and how often they send out newsletters. There are wild extremes. One learned professor of literature sends out newsletters 8,000 words long, with no illustrations (I suspect he'd take a shotgun to an emoji!), while a historical romance author's newsletters are so pink that I need to put sunglasses on—she averages about 250 words, which are adorned with gangs of animated emojis, gifs and memes—there's virtually no content....I've seen deeper puddles.
If you run a blog, do you use emojis?
Do newsletters from blogs you subscribe to use emojis to good effect, or do you find them annoying?
Emojis have even had a movie made about them, which was voted one of the worst films of 2017, winning four Golden Raspberry awards.
The Emoji Movie - Wikipedia
Usage of emojis in communications is so common, that in 2014, 76% of 1,000 American workers polled in a survey admitted to using them:
Everyone—and your mom—is using emojis at work
To my mind, the use of an emoji is to convey a point humorously, to emphasise my own point of view. They're useful additions to how I communicate, providing the reader with little treats and helping to break up off-putting blocks of text...people's attention spans are diminishing, remember.
The thing is, should emojis be used in formal business letters? What about in blog posts? I think they're inappropriate for serious messages, being too flippant. You wouldn't feel entertained if your oncologist included sad and crying emojis in their email about your cancer scan test results. A blog post examining Nazi concentration camp atrocities wouldn't carry more weight by the use of emojis.
I use emojis in my posts on the Colony, as do many of us, for we've created a convivial atmosphere here where we're supportive of others and able to laugh at our own mistakes. Just recently, I've been reading through old posts I made, dating back to 2015, when I joined, with a view to using them as a basis for content on my resuscitated writer's blog Paul Pens. This will be part of my self-promotion campaign, creating an online author's platform to sell myself and my books to the reading public.
I'm glad that I had the presence of mind, to save my posts in a folder on my desktop, which has made editing them easier. I typed EMOJI in the text, for where I would insert one, but I've been wondering if they're OK to use in a blog.
I intend to run two blogs, with Paul Pens devoted to the world of writing and publishing, while a Cornish Detective blog will be used more to promote my series of novels while examining real-life crimes and fictional goodies and baddies through the ages.
I'm a firm believer in the importance of disseminating information—to help people through life—but, I also like to keep things light-hearted, as it makes what I'm saying more palatable. Judicious use of emojis might help.
I've subscribed to about 100 blogs in the last year, including some from authors whose books I wouldn't normally tackle, just to see how they go about updating their site and how often they send out newsletters. There are wild extremes. One learned professor of literature sends out newsletters 8,000 words long, with no illustrations (I suspect he'd take a shotgun to an emoji!), while a historical romance author's newsletters are so pink that I need to put sunglasses on—she averages about 250 words, which are adorned with gangs of animated emojis, gifs and memes—there's virtually no content....I've seen deeper puddles.
If you run a blog, do you use emojis?
Do newsletters from blogs you subscribe to use emojis to good effect, or do you find them annoying?
