Using Single Symbols to Convey Complex Ideas

I must say that I never really got the whole emoticon thing. Sure, you lose all nonverbal communication when writing, but, really people have been communicating with writing for millennia without needing that shit. Do you think George Washington drew smily faces on his letters home during the war? No. No he did not.

More importantly, there is a rich history of much more intelligent ways of using single symbols to portraying complex ideas. For instance, there are mathematical and scientific constants. More relevant, though, are the powerful symbols present across the entire top of your keyboard. here, I will run though them in rough order:

~ This means about, or roughly. Very useful when you don't have or care to communicate exact quantities. Especially instead of saying something stupid like 'over.'

@ or 'at.' Of course, this is only good for abstract internet type locations. Never, and I mean never, use it to indicate any kind of physical or spatiotemporal location.

$ "The following figure refers to a quantity of money."

# "The following number is, in fact, a number."

^ "look up!"

& 'and' I cannot understand why one would need to throw any other abbreviations in here, like 'n' or '+.' We have a perfectly good and cool looking symbol already. Use it.

( ) "The thing I said in between these is only tangentially related to what I am actually trying to say, but I have chosen to obscure the main point of my writing by unnecessarily complicating it with trivial details." I know it's actually two symbols. Deal with it.

and finally
* Which means "whatever I just said is not really true, but I have chosen to relegate its untruth to a small comment at the bottom in hopes that you won't look at it."