More and more these days, I feel like I speak to people through the written word rather than in person. And that’s not just because I work in journalism.

I would say the main way I communicate with my friends nowadays is by text message, e-mail and social networking. All of them rely exclusively on words, and most of the time, they are meant to be quick notes.

I recently stumbled upon this blog post when I was on the site reading Red Eye’s iPhone blog. It’s a short post, but if you don’t want to read it, it’s about emoticons and dating and what an emoticon means. This blog is lighthearted and essentially says that “Do you want to come over and watch a movie? ” translates to “Do you want to come over and sleep with me?”

This does bring up the point about emoticons and communication. I snobbishly used to say that if you were truly a great writer that emoticons are unnecessary and your meaning is always clear. But I don’t really believe that anymore. I think that sometimes, a text or e-mail written with the best of intentions can be misinterpreted by the reader. And for that reason, emoticons might be sometimes necessary.

The problem with communicating with someone by text is that the conversation is devoid of all the little nuances–the non-verbal cues–you get from speaking face to face. Even something as “I’m sorry to bother you” can be taken many different ways if not accompanied by irritation or sympathy or a laugh.

The question is, how are we going to be able to communicate these things if that is the way technology is going? How do we prevent miscommunication if we aren’t able to convey the emotion with the text? Emoticons, in many ways, have become a way to convey those things. However primitive it may be, these combinations of punctuation marks have become staples of communication among friends.