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The English we speak.

Oh, what's happened Vera, you don't look very happy.

Of course I'm not happy. I've just read the email you sent saying if I don't come to the studio soon

You're going to present the program by yourself. That's right. And then you wrote, with my beautiful voice, nobody will miss

yours. That's a horrible thing to say, Rob. Well, it would be horrible if it was a serious message, but haven't you noticed my

emoticon at the end of the message?

A moticon?

I have the message printed out here.

Yes, I can see here in the email that you typed a colon followed by a hyphen and a closing bracket. and when I look at it sideways I can see a smiley face.

It's an emoticon. It was a joke after all.

A motorcon's were created precisely for this purpose to avoid misunderstandings like the one we've just had.

I wrote my message as a joke and you took it seriously.

I read recently that emototecon's were created 30 years ago by a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Emotecon is a combination of the words emotional and icon.

And it indicates if a message is serious or a joke.

When you speak you can express if you're serious about what you're saying,

but sometimes it's difficult to achieve that on paper.

Listen to some verbal examples.

I don't like going to the cinema with you.

...