During the first few weeks in Ukraine I was wondering all the time why I received text messages on whatsapp, skype etc. like:

"This was awesome)))))"

Did the developer fall asleep as he was finishing up with his message? Was the “)” key stuck? Did I miss the part where he opened the parentheses? It kept happening, and not just with this one guy. Everyone I chatted with from Ukraine insisted on leaning on the “)” at the end of sentences. Eventually I got used to it. An interesting quirk, but not harmful in any way. Soon I was so used to it that I didn't pay attention anymore.

But one day the mystery was solved: A wise man explained to me, that an eternity ago, ":" was considered as a special character and used around 5 (expensive) characters in SMS. Yes, technology was different back then... Amazingly, all of Ukraine stuck with this quirky notation to this day.

I was telling a colleague about my discovery and she and offered yet another explanation. Her reasoning was that it's considerably faster to type just ")" in any keyboard layout. It looks more elegant and simplistic to write ")))" if you laugh, than :):):) or heaven forbid :-):-):-).

Think about the last email you wrote. Did you struggle with the tone? Was it serious? Or lighthearted? Was it friendly or business-like? Even to native-English speakers it can be hard to effectively communicate what you mean to say. Smileys help and with millennials starting to dominate management positions, a well placed smile is completely acceptable, even in serious business conversations.

Next time you’re chatting with a Ukrainian developer, don’t be confused about missing : they only wanna save bandwidth)))