Emoticons

Emoticons…For those who don’t know, emoticons are not a new character in the next Transformers move…no…emoticons are those smiley faces or sad faces you see all over most correspondence these days.  I must admit, I’ve found that I struggle to avoid using them.  Somewhere down the line they became something I used in order to show that I was playfully jesting or using sarcasm when using written communication.  I have no problem with this in informal communication like friendly emails or text messages (okay I should say I don’t have a big problem…I’m not a fan but they’re acceptable).  The problem arises when you become so dependent on emoticon’s to convey tone in written messages that you can no longer communicate without them.  How am I supposed to convey a lighthearted tone in a professional email without the obligatory :)?  I don’t necessary have an answer for that which is what bothers me about emoticons.  I’ve gotten so used to using them I’m not sure how to go with out them.  I suppose I could resort to the asterix’d words to indicate *sarcasm* or *spoken with tone of disappointment* but somehow that loses something of its meaning when I do that.  For now I’ll just have to leave the smiley’s out of my emails and hope I’m not misinterpreted in any way.  Maybe I should just become a better writer and learn how to convey feeling by the vocabulary I use…I always hated vocab though.