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View submission: The NewToReddit Encyclopaedia Redditica v2
You will probably already know that placing /s at the end of your comment will clarify that you're being sarcastic, and /jk means you’re attempting to joke. These are Tone Indicators, and while they’ve been around a very long time, you will gradually see more unfamiliar ones being used across Reddit.
A Tone Indicator[1] does exactly what it says it does: indicates the tone of what you're saying, and those are just two of many that are slowly becoming commonplace, especially among the many neurodiverse Redditors[2] we have here.
1: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tone%20indicators
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurodiversity
- An early problem
From the moment that online quick communication was first devised, it soon became apparent that the written word alone wasn’t nearly enough to properly convey a meaning. Real conversation is full of paralinguistic information: the meaning that we glean from visual and vocal cues beyond the actual words spoken. We interpret what someone says from their voice; from tone, volume and pacing. We observe their facial expressions and their body language, and judge whether they sync with the spoken words. Electronic messages simply cannot compete.
- An early solution
To try and get round this problem[3], Scott E. Fahlman, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, created the smiley face in September 1982[4] and the rest is history. His solution: Add the symbol :-) to denote humorous posts, and add the symbol :-( to serious ones. In his announcement about this proposal, he had to advise readers to “read it sideways.”
3: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/sefSmiley.htm
4: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/Orig-Smiley.htm
For some time, the generic term ‘smiley’ was used to describe all kinds of these symbols that emerged, even angry ones. Another method of communicating intent originated in IRC channels in 1999 and was known as Emotes[5]. As the verb ‘to emote’ means to display emotions openly especially while acting, it made sense to use the same word to describe an entry in a text-based chat client that indicates an action taking place, but it didn’t seem to catch on in the same way as the later ‘emoticon’ or ‘emoji’.
5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emote
- A current problem
We have pretty much established that Reddit does not like modern emojis in preference of the Unicode text emoticon, but as the use of Tone Indicators is starting to catch on, a comprehensive list of Tone Indicators[6] is available here. However, for the time being , be prepared to have to explain some of the more obscure ones like /neu or /lu.
6: https://toneindicators.carrd.co/#masterlist
There's nothing here!