Michael

Ruth Ellen: I never tell our cats they’re bad cats–they’re excellent cats (well, one of them is–the other is confused as to whether he’s a cat, a dog, or maybe a seal), but they exhibit lots of catlike behavior that is bad by human standards.

I always hold that the world is fair, in the sense that whenever I think it’s being unfair to me and mine, it’s probably just busy being fair to someone else at the moment.

I have nothing special against emoticons–I just don’t use them.

I never use more than one exclamation point in a sentence, and preferably never more than one or two in an essay, either.

My resolution was only for myself, not for anyone else, although it does match up with my own reading of the Universal Guideline (that is, treat other people at least as well as you’d *like* them to treat you).

The reasoning is:
IF someone attacks me personally,
THEN I’ll waste emotional energy in responding with a personal attack and almost certainly not achieve anything worthwhile, THEREFORE life’s too short.

Doesn’t mean I won’t respond to the argument contained within an attack (if there is one), and doesn’t mean I’ll always do what I just said I should do. (After all, resolutions seem generally made to be broken, one reason I haven’t made any for years.)

It also certainly doesn’t mean that anyone else should follow my practice! That’s why I used “I” instead of “you.”

I left one thing out of the commentary:
In my experience, people who wage this kind of personal attack, diva behavior, stereotyping, belittling, etc. on me will almost certainly be equally dismissive and the like to other people…and eventually it probably will catch up with them. I don’t feel the need to be the instrument of vengeance…

They help avoid misunderstanding.

We’re socially allowed to use periods, commas, question marks, exclamation points, colons, semi-colons … all of which were a newfangled innovation at one time.

Emoticon have a bad reputation since younger (and hence lower-status) people tend to be the most enthusiatic users. But, e.g. that’s true of exclamation points too – note that’s most associated with expressing emotion.

By the way, I don’t follow your reasoning about don’t respond in kind. “IF someone attacks, THEN [something will happen], THEREFORE don’t repond”?