“Smiling is infectious, you catch it like the flu, When someone smiled at me today, I started smiling too.

    I passed around the corner and someone saw my grin. When he smiled I realised I’d passed it on to him.

    I thought about that smile, then I realised its worth. A single smile,  just like mine could travel round the earth.

    So, if you feel a smile begin, don’t leave it undetected. Let’s start an epidemic quick, and get the world infected!”― Anon

I spotted this little poem in my doctors surgery, probably 10 years ago.  It did make me smile. But can you tell whether the writer was smiling when she wrote this?  I’m not sure whether I can or not.  

When I am messaging, I am a prolific fan of the emoticon smiley.  However, that is hardly appropriate when you are writing professional sales copy.  Yet, in real life, we know that a sincere smile is prerequisite for engaging potential clients and keeping their attention thereafter. 

The written word does not provide the opportunity for the nuances in communication that face-to-face encounters do, a wink or a smirk for example.  All of us have stories where we have sent an email, or a text or have responded to a blog post where our meaning has been misconstrued. So how do you convey that winning smile in your message and, as a reader, just how do you know if the author is smiling at you?

I guess, adding humour is an option, but where a smile is universal, humour is subjective and relies on the understanding mind and the emotional state of the reader.  “Je suis Charlie” is a prime example.  Perhaps communicating online is a serious business and we should not be frivolous when asking people to take some action. Or maybe we simply add a picture of us smiling?  It is infectious after all.

PS.  If you have time to share some examples of smiling text, I’d love to read what you think …

Published by thehiddenedge

I love words - they can say so much and say so little depending on how you use them. Come and explore them with me in this learning journal. View all posts by thehiddenedge