Alex Williams writes in the New York Times that Emoticons have been around 25 years and have gone way beyond high school IM discussion about the cute boy or girl and laments how our language is being truncated with symbols because we lack the time to properly express ourselves with the written word. I started using emoticons only a year ago when I started communicating with coworkers predominantly on IM. It became apparent that my dry humor (hard enough to read when face to face) had no body language to back it up.

I like l33t sp33k and IM, emoticons and LOL. You could make an argument that it isn't appropriate for rejecting a multi-million dollar deal, or you could accept that in this day and age curtness is king, communication is ubiquitous, and no one will ever again have the attention span required to watch Das Boot. Don't bother reading the seven Harry Potter books --- Voldemort kills **** :)