I can’t figure out any good way to put a smiley emoticon inside parentheses. There are five choices, all of which are bad:

• Do the straightforward thing of just writing it (which puts two parentheses next to each other in a row, and makes it unclear where the smiley face ends and the parenthesis proper begins :)).¹
• Do that, but put the period inside the parentheses. (Which requires restructuring your sentences, and ends up looking ugly anyway, like some deformed double-mouth emoticon :).)
• Put a space between the emoticon and the close parenthesis (which does look more visually distinct, but there’s no other situation where you put a space before the close parenthesis :) ).
• Only put a single close parenthesis (possibly the worst option because you can’t tell if the parenthesis is part of the punctuation or part of the emoticon :).
• Add some text after the smiley so it’s not at the end of the parenthetical (but maybe you have nothing left to say so the text is superfluous :) haha wouldn’t it be crazy if I wrote some extra stuff here?).

There’s a secret sixth option of “don’t use emoticons inside parentheses” but, like, what if I really want to? (emoticons are important sometimes :) )

Posted on Dec 11, 2025

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