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Usually I dislike emoticons. As modern hieroglyphs they seem too commercial—they have the potential for being manipulative, over-controlling the tone of a letter or journal entry with a colloquial mood. However, today the subject needed a quick cartoonish reference, a glib, sarcastic scrawl to sum up my attitude: that blank, somewhat bitter stare of “Really?”— mixture of shock and disbelief— I may never use it again. Yet, the shorthand-shortcut approach does carry a casual interpretation by the average reader. So now I waffle between maintaining the use of a dated glyph from the Nineties more often in these raw free-writing exercises—or keep a more academic approach. Time will tell.