If your sentence has a smiley face within parentheses, how do you correctly type it?

Question

Do you type it this way (this is an example :))?
Or this way (another example :) )?
Or like this (yet another example :)?
Or would you type it after the parentheses (like this) :)?

I'm just wondering... it's not necessary, in most cases, to type a smiley face in a sentence like this. However, if you were to do so, which way is proper?

Answer 1

I would put the smiley AFTER the sentence. I don't think it really matters, though, as it's just net speak and people get what you mean no matter what.

I agree though, they all look funny. I've kinda wondered the same thing myself (and have resorted to either leaving out the smiley or putting it after the sentence).

Answer 2

Smiley faces can vary in complexity. A "bare bones" version is a colon, a dash and a right round bracket, no spaces in between. :-) But this can be augmented in many ways. Some people use a left round bracket before the colon to "complete the head". Some people add multiple right round brackets to indicate grinning, laughing, etc. Some people use an 8 or semi-colon in place of the colon to indicate, respectively, sunglasses or winking. Still others use the bare-bones version, but space the characters out because their programme automatically converts the typed characters to an actual emoticon if the spaces are omitted. Given all these variations, which are actually fairly common, I'd suggest not putting the smiley in brackets, just put a double space on either side of it (think of the smiley as a sentence).

Answer 3

When I type a smiley in parentheses I put a space on either side of the smiley, so that it looks like this ( :) ) ... I know it looks strange here, but in most IM programs now the :) is automatically replaced with a picture of a smiley, so it doesn't look strange.

Answer 4

It's your judgement you're sending the letter, but I think the last way is the best.

Answer 5

The last would be the best, but I like to do it like this: =).

Answer 6

Maybe this way: [ : ) ]

Answer 7

( ☺ )