Re:First use of an emoticon in 1862?
by verdant on Thursday May 07, 2009 @03:42PM
(#598518)
Spelling and punctuation were much less standardized in the 19th century than they are today. We look at those symbols with a modern eye and we recognize patterns that we use today. But the way we interpret those symbols would likely be nothing similar to the way a person from 1862 would.
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When I read a Lord Byron biography, and after seeing his prose in correspondences he struck me as a script kiddie, until I heard on NPR recently that they used contraptions to save on expensive ink and fit more words into the precious page.