TerrieMiller.com
Bring back the <g>!
Back in prehistoric email times…say, oh, 1995 or thereabouts…many of us (well, Steve and I and at least a few others) peppered our emails with an emoticon for “grin”: <g>. 
It was extraordinarily useful for avoiding miscommunication and indicating when we were were being facetious or sarcastic. And it didn’t have the cloying cuteness of the colon-parenthesis smiley face that I can’t even bring myself to type here.
Recently, I’ve started introducing <g> to people who’ve never seen it. My friend Jo made a fantastic suggestion to add <f> as a complementary “frown” (or perhaps another f-word), but let’s start simple. I’d like to issue a call for bringing back the <g>. And it even has it’s own facebook page.
Of course, the angle brackets may give web developers fits. But who cares about them anyway <g>.
Here are some good reasons to use <g> over :-):
- You can’t use colons, parentheses, or other punctuation effectively around :-).
- You can qualify a <g> with such refinements as <g?>, <g!>, <vbfg>, etc. (I think “<g?>” alone makes the case).
- <f> can certainly replace :-(. I think we can probably come up with equivalents for any of the silly emoticons (like :-\…).
Due to the angle bracket issue, you’ll need to use entities in the comments. <g>
So for < use < and for > > — for now. Perhaps some Wordpress hackers can help us in our campaign.
I [heart]
(there, I said it), but <g> is a reasonable alternative.
LOL is the one that makes me want to kill (as in “I’m so funny!! LOL!!!”)