Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0018092, Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:43:11 -0700

Subject
Re: Nabokov told The New York Times ...
Date
Body
In Response to Sandy Klein's info, I would immodestly call attention
to my essay "Nabokov's Typographic Poetry: Transparent Things"
on the Nabokov Museum Web site http://www.nabokovmuseum.org/PDF/Johnson.pdf.
The piece discusses the origin of the emoticon and VN's prescient
avant le lettre" discussion thereof. The eassay also contains, in so
far as I recall", the answer to Jay Garman's query at the end of his
message below.

D. Barton Johnson
-------------------------------------------------

Quoting "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@HOTMAIL.COM>:

>
>
> Geekend
>
>
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> Complete article at following URL:
>
> http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/geekend/?p=2205
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>
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> Geek Trivia: Pros and (emoti)cons
>
> Date: March 24th, 2009
> Author: Jay Garmon
>
>
> Theoretically, if you’ve ever typed a colon or semicolon in sequence
> with a parenthesis with the intent of indicating the emotional tone
> of a written statement, then you just might owe somebody a royalty
> fee. Contrary to all conventional wisdom, the use of certain
> emoticons — which is the term of art for those little smileys and
> frownies composed of punctuation marks — is trademarked in certain
> contexts. Seriously.
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> [ ... ]
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> The documented use of emoticons goes back more than a quarter
> century — and is older than the word emoticon itself. More to the
> point, the use of punctuation-based symbols to denote tone
> (especially sarcasm) is older still. No less a literary authority
> than Vladimir Nabokov told The New York Times in 1969 that, “I often
> think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile —
> some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket.” The ARPAnet was
> just getting the hang of packet-switching at that point, so it’s
> safe to say the idea of an emoticon predates the Internet.
>
>
>
> By 1982, Internet-based communication was common enough that its
> regular users had recognized the need for something akin to the
> “supine round bracket” that Nabokov proposed — and somebody said so.
> While many users probably independently solved the problem, one man
> gets credit for launching the emoticon concept — if not the word —
> into the online lexicon.
>
>
>
> WHO IS CREDITED WITH INTRODUCING THE SMILEY EMOTICON TO THE INTERNET?
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> Search archive with Google:
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>
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>
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>
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>

Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en

Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com

Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/