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Could emojis be considered punctuation?

Chevywolf30

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I'm one of the last people I'd expect to make a thread like this, but do you think it would be a reasonable change in language to consider emojis as punctuation:suspicious: I find myself using them as punctuation sometimes because they really help show the tone of a sentence, and it looks weird to have both an emoji and a period/question mark/exclamation point/etc:shrugs: So do you think this would be something worth making legit, or is it a bad idea:suspicious:
 

Spiritual Mask Salesman

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It doesn't seem very practical. For example, you are only ever using an emoji as a punctuation that ends a sentence in the OP, but still using commas which are proper punctuation elsewhere. It also needs to make sense as a spoken language as well, so emojis would not translate well in an attempt to read a sentence aloud that has used emojis in place of actual punctuation. Then there is the fact that besides typing digitally, we also need to be able to physically write, or at least, it is a useful skill to have that I don't imagine will go away anytime soon. Drawing emojis as punctuation would only make writing more tedious than it needs to be.

If i remember right, a lot of early forms of written languages started out as sort of illustrative drawings similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs (this is definitely true of Kanji, at least). Those illustrations over years were simplified more and more until they were no longer full drawings, and instead merely lines that sort of abstractly represent the original idea of the drawing. As long as there is still a need or desire to physically write, I can only imagine something similar happening over centuries because we prioritize simplifying for convenience if possible.

Plus if inserting emojis as punctuation was actually attempted in formal writing we would have to completely overhaul our language and redefine the rules of it.
 
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Dio

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I'm one of the last people I'd expect to make a thread like this, but do you think it would be a reasonable change in language to consider emojis as punctuation:suspicious: I find myself using them as punctuation sometimes because they really help show the tone of a sentence, and it looks weird to have both an emoji and a period/question mark/exclamation point/etc:shrugs: So do you think this would be something worth making legit, or is it a bad idea:suspicious:

I don't think it's a reasonable change in language at all. Between friends communication can be done in any quirky way they like but in terms of how language is taught and formal writing. I don't think so. It would likely create a divide between the old and younger generations because 60% of the population is old and I can't see most of them wanting to adopt this. In fact I'm sure a lot of young people wouldn't want this to be official either.
 
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I don’t think they should be acceptable as formal communication or on a college essay, etc. but who knows in another hundred years with language and standards always changing.
 

Vanessa28

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Definitely not. Between friends it's okay but not in all kind of communication. It doesn't give the right impression when used in a formal conversation and like Dizzi already said it gives a different message to different people.
 

Jimmu

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I don't really think they should be considered as punctuation but they are certainly useful in a casual context for communicating emotion over a written format where it can be otherwise tricky to do so. When you write longer form there are typically more textual means by which you can convey emotion to the reader and many formal contexts either don't require or should not ever include emotion in them to begin with.
 

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