The finer points of emoticons and English punctuation

[foxfirefey]

highlyeccentric has a crucial question for the internets:

As I'm sure you know, O Internets, there are strict rules of English punctuation. Some of them, such as those governing the relationship of punctuation marks in series, can be a matter for heated debate.

So I must ask you: in a well-constructed sentence, shall the smiley face be placed before, or after, the full stop? If one places a smiley face inside of a parenthetical statement at the end of a sentence, how does one deal with the resulting overdose of punctuation (your sentence will look like this :))?

Please deliver a rule at once, the ambiguity is causing me distress :(. (?)

Comments

[absque_setentia]

I laughed because I have been fretting over this for ages. :)

[yasaman]

I've always wondered about this too! I feel like the emoticons should come after the period...

[msilverstar]

I think we all wonder about it! I consider an emoticon to be a full stop unless it's in the middle of a sentence, but feel a bit uncomfortable :-/

[fenellaevangela]

I consider an emoticon to be a full stop unless it's in the middle of a sentence

That's how I tend to use them :-)

[sky]

I've always used it as...

-The emoticon comes after the punctuation, or else in place of the punctuation.
-Inside parentheses one should leave a space between emoticon and the closing parenthesis (like this :D ).

</thoughts on yaoi>

[ex_pseudonym472]

Me too.

[azurelunatic]

That's about how I've been doing it too.

[cesy]

Yeah, same.