If I say the word ‘ellipse’ (in French) you’d be hard pressed to know if I mean an oval or an omission. You can only know that from context. Body language work

If I say the word ‘ellipse’ (in French) you’d be hard pressed to know if I mean an oval or an omission. You can only know that from context. Body language works exactly the same, the exact meaning of a smile by itself is ambiguous, as it’s built from context. Adding back information previously lost via traditional sentence serialisation in text medium through text emoticons, graphic emojis, and other annotations (like /s) conveys this information which might entirely change the meaning of the sentence; emotion is completely tied to the semantics and critical to understanding. To me it looks a lot like didascalies (stage direction notes) in theatre play texts.