chadspad wrote:...tried to use in an email to a friend. She couldnt see them tho, only a red cross in the corner - does anyone know why this is please?
It may be to do with the way her email client is set up. Originally, email was a text-only format, and some of us like to keep our email clients set that way.
...and then wrote:I love them and think they make it so much more fun on forums and emails. It was always difficult to judge peoples moods in an email but these help so much. Hooray for the smileys!!
Look, um, how can I say this without appearing to be an elderly stick-in-the-mud...? I can't! Right [grits teeth]: I hate the bleeding things. There! I said it! Now I guess I'll have to endure no end of smart-arsed replies full of smilies just to taunt me. Well let me tell you that ad-blockers work on more than just advertisements.
Thing is, for thousands of years we've been using the written word to communicate with each other. Every mood and emotion imaginable has been successfully conveyed by the written word alone. Now, suddenly, since the advent of electronic forums, we seem unable to do that.
That's a puzzle to me.
If we don't litter our messages with these horrible little distractions, people think we are being rude, or unpleasant. Soon we will be trapped by them, unable to write anything without them for fear of being misunderstood. We will become, in a way, illiterate; only able to convey sentiment through pre-defined graphic icons; communication will become clumsey and tokenised, without the flexibility that words have.
I'm please to think that I have never used one of these things. Well, I might have used one once. But it was an accident I tell you, and I was probably drunk at the time.
I remain, grumpily yours,
) and tried to use in an email to a friend. She couldnt see them tho, only a red cross in the corner - does anyone know why this is please? 
its hard enought to understand what she's typing without all the little jumping faces getting in the way