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Comment by mghackerlady | Hacker News Reader

unrelated but I've never understood how to put a smiley at the end of parenthetical sentences (which comes up surprisingly often for me since I use smileys a lot and also like using parentheses). Just the smiley as an end parentheses (like this :) feels off but adding another parentheses (like this :) ) makes it look like it should be nested which causes problems since I also tend to nest parenthetical sentences (like (this)).

Yes I enjoy lisp, how could you tell

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The answer is obviously to balance your smiley faces and wrap the entire statement in the smiley face sentiment. ((: Like this :))

I like this simply for the absurdity of it, but will only use it when the entire parenthetical is modified by the smiley instead of a single word or phrase (:since I really like it:) but (it looks ugly, no hard feelings :) )

That’s quite the Scheme…

Ah, Spanish notation.

You have to invert the front one! (⸵ Of course, only noticable if it's a winky ;)

Turned Semicolon (U+2E35 ⸵)

Your comment made me realise that there's logic to this (like this :), since in HTML we can:

    <li> do this
    <li> and this

instead of: <li> ... </li>

and <img alt='this'> instead of <img ... />

You might like Lisp, but what you're saying reminds me of the late 00s/early 2010s xHTML2 vs. HTML5 debate :)

I'm an avid defender of xHTML. You can pry it from my cold dead hands

Thanks, I hate it :)

You monster.

Post C++11 you can just do (like this:)), no extra space needed before the last parenthesis.

But then it looks like I'm using a double smiley[0] which I do actually use on occasion

[0] :))

You could use a bracket in the smiley (like this :]) as is sometimes used when nesting parentheticals.

I sometimes do the opposite and use brackets for the parentheticals [like this :)]

I tend to rephrase myself so I dont end a statement inside a parenthesis with a smiley.

It's one of those things I think are worth putting some extra effort into, I'm glad to see at least one other person giving it some thought. Thx <3

Use dashes and the problem goes away! Well, you gain the LLM witch-hunt, but heh, no free lunch.

Synthetic example:

"Вот его, нет, не допустили (сама знаешь, почему)))"

My translation:

"But him - no, they didn't let him in (of course you know why :)"

When I went from texting friends in Russian or Ukrainian back to English, I missed right parentheses as a smiley; one or two - hi), hello)) - to me are like a smile, by ))) and )))) there's some laughing or some other joke going on. Native speakers could weigh in; my native tongue is English.

allow me to introduce my friend – turned smiley here he is: ´◡` (quite useful for brackets ´◡`)

you can find him on windows by pressing Win + ; not as fast as typing, but quite faster then typing and then wondering if thats too much brackets or too little

I love kaomoji so I use this on occasion but nothing can match the subtle passive aggressiveness and level of expression unmatched by anything else :)

You're really on to something there (-:

I’ve always been bothered by instances of your first example, and I mostly use “XD” instead of “:)” to sidestep the issue in my own writing.

The relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/541

I have the same problem. I just ditch the smiley face. :)

never >:(

Are you quoting someone doing a sad face or are you angry? ;)

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