It’s interesting to see how these signs continue to permeate into the language to describe the simple concepts we use everyday. We are literally moving back to the ancient times, like the old Egyptian hieroglyphs. I’m not saying we are devolving or anything, but there was a time we – as a civilization – considered pure text as a step forward, now it seems that a hybrid solution is taking over. Every time we implement a chat functionality on a website or in an app, we include emoticons or the like, no one really questions that anymore, it is a standard these days. For better or for worse. I’m mentioning this out of curiosity as a former linguist.