This week, the Associated Press reported something every college professor already knows: young people increasingly use informal language in what is supposed to be formal writing. The study, a co-production of the Pew Internet and American Life Project and the National Commission on Writing at the College Board, noted that 50% of kids sometimes fail to use proper capitalization in formal writing. They are also inclined to use the informal language of instant messaging, like "lol" for "laughing out loud" or emoticons like :) or :( to indicate how a statement is to be understood. The developmental psychologist in me, says "And why shouldn't they?" Scholars of play in non-human primates and in young children spend tons of time studying metacommunicative devices, those faces and vocalizations that indicate how a message is to be understood. Monkeys, when playing, use very specific facial expressions to indicate that "this nip is not a bite," just as children indicate to each other the differences between play fighting and real fighting. These face-to-face interactions use metacommunication to increase clarity and avoid confusion. Emoticons might be seen as a carryover into written language of precisely this kind of metacommunication: by adding a :) or a "lol," kids clarify for each other (and sometimes for their professors) how a statement is meant to be understood. What's wrong with that? Well…the writer in me says, everything is wrong with that. Using words to reduce ambiguity is what good writing is all about. The writer in me says using emoticons is lazy as well as childish. Language changes, as we know, and it may be that in two generations everyone will be using emoticons. But those of us who grew up without them will always see them as a cheap shortcut and a distraction from the simple elegance of clear prose. And that's only half the problem. The other half is that prose is sometimes meant to be ambiguous, and metacommunicative devices can spoil the delicious mystery of what the writer intends. Imagine if Jonathan Swift had used emoticons in his famous 1729 satirical piece "A Modest Proposal For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public." Swift might have written, ”I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled :) " No one would have said, "How outrageous!" or "He can't be serious!" or "That man should be locked up!" They would have been certain he was "lol." What a dreary world. The writer in me says, in the emoticon world, all that :) adds up to one big :( .