U.S. booed and heckled at Earth Summit!

There IS NO reason to use so many markup codes and smilies.

To be totally honest, coolguy, I don?t see how your criticism has any relevance to this thread at all. Also, did I miss something? Are mark-up codes now illegal? Is there some rule in the T-o-S that states that mark-up codes should be used sparingly?
I DON?T THINK SO!

If you look at my post, I only used five types of mark-up codes: italics, bolded and highlighted text, emoticons, and links. I used the italics for quotations of my fellow JCer; this is standard procedure. I used the bolded and highlighted text to emphasize important points/concepts in my post; in my view this was necessary because the text of my post was quite long (as I clearly put some time and effort into its composition ? which is no crime either). I used emoticons to relay personal expressions (that allow us JCers to mildly transcend the 2-dimensionality of text); the last I checked, this was not a crime. Lastly, I took the time to embed links in my text not only to bolster my case, but for the benefit of anyone wanting to access my information/sources readily; if anything, embedding links is not doing a disservice to my fellow JCers, but actually doing them a favour.

IMHO, for all these reasons, it is difficult to conclude that you criticism is anything other than absurd, petty, confused, weak, sad, and distinctly out of place for the content/arguments of this thread.

 

I was just kidding, I really just wanted to try them all out.

Your post was not even the worst example of using them I have seen anyways.