xkcd comic #541 (titled “TED Talk”) expose a problem I’ve long been aware of: how do you end parenthetical statements with emoticons?
Randall reveal two possible solutions:
-
… Linux (or BSD :) would…
-
… Linux (or BSD :) ) would…
Of course, none of these are acceptable! But today, I think I’ve found the definitive solution…
As you may know, unicode comes with loads of weird characters. The weirdest are called dingbats . Beside this family, you’ll find the weirdest of the weirdest , which contain 2 interesting symbols:
-
☹ (aka white frowning face )
-
☺ (aka white smiling face )
So using the latest, our statement become:
… Linux (or BSD ☺) would…
Problem solved! :D
2 archived comments
Comments are closed. These were posted on Disqus, and are archived here.
-
Wouldn't this work better?
Linux (or BSD :]-
Surely you mean "Linux (or BSD :]) would"? Still looks a mite confusing and rather ugly. I am a fan of "Linux (: or BSD :) would" because it has twice the smiles, but it does not work for frowny faces and the convention may have to be explained.
As for the original post, using Unicode seems like overkill to me, but on the other hand, my motto is "Use XML and UTF8 for literally everything". And there are lots more choices of emoticons (emoji) to use; now you can have a BSD-appreciating cat!🐱😺
-