Comment by xentronium
13 years ago
For some reason, using closing parens instead of proper smileys with colons caught on in Russia and some Eastern Europe countries (never seen one from anyone living in Western Europe).
Not to offend dschiptsov, but (ab)using them is an awful habit to have.
I have always heard that it was because Russian/Eastern Europe keyboards doesn't have a colon in their layout, but looking at the layout[0] that doesn't seem to be true.
But the colon combination is a bit awkward for adding quick smileys (SHIFT+6) which makes it understandable that one would use )) instead.
A bit unrelated, but I once had a guy trying to scam me on Steam using some neat chat request trick using a friends name. Disregarding all the other scamming signs I easily spotted this being another user because of the )) overuse. I know it is silly, but I can't help but chuckle a little bit when I see )) or similar.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Russian.svg
It is the case in a lot of chat programs that you will get
Tipzntrix: hi Tipzntrix: )
The closing paren is supposed to be attached to the colon to make a super quick happy face.
or sad face.
Tipzntrix: (
I've also only seen it from some EE girls I've dated. It's really odd isn't. It drove me insane initially. I guess they'd argue it reduces typing time by 50%!
Interesting
(at least where I came from, EE girls are very rare)
But they do type smiles properly.
I would assume EE types would have other problems with typyjng, or maybe not;