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I have begun communicating with a fellow online. He writes well, has a good vocabulary and his areas of study are interesting to me. BUT... I am having a hard time with a writing habit that seems pretty odd, and it is in EVERY message at least once at the beginning, and again at the conclusion.

I feel so petty for pointing this out, but maybe someone here has experience or can put it into a context where I can let it go?

He writes "Smile." I think in place of the :) icon that most people in informal writing. But he writes the word out. The first time I read it I thought it was a command sentence telling me to smile. But it is not. It is just a thing he does.

I am wondering how this translates into verbal conversation???

Anyhow... This is a first for me and I have talked to LOTS of people online. Thought I would share!

He's probably not actually writing 'smile'
Your email client just substitutes a smilie that it doesn't support, with the word. He probably sees the smilie but it doesn't show up properly in your email.
This happens all the time when emailing to/from different clients.

[This message edited by Hurt_Evermore at 1:57 PM, June 24th (Monday)]

OH!!! That makes sense!

See? Putting it here is always the right thing to do.

It is weird though to read it...

Wow - I would never have figured that out. I would have thought the same as caregiver.

thank you persevere. I appreciate not being alone in my state.

Seriously, though, I kept thinking "Smile! You're on Candid Camera!" as if online dating isn't weird enough as it is...

I have girlfriends who text/email words like smile, sigh, laugh, frown etc instead of using emoticons.For them it's just a style of using text.

You can try it on SI, by putting a colon immediately before and after the word smile. It'll automatically insert a happy smilie. He might even be used to typing it out himself knowing that it's a smilie command, but not knowing that it doesn't show up properly in your messages!

I don't think he's as weird as it looks!