I've actually tried to stop using emoticons quite so much, as I can't help but feel each one is a small admission of my failure to accurately convey mood through text. But they're just too useful - and when I started my attempt to replace the occasional ":)" with the "!" I felt I really meant, people said that they couldn't imagine me using exclamation marks in speech.

I tend to limit myself to a sort of linear range from joy to horror, :D :) :( D: with a boggle-eyed D% reserved for real emergencies like witnessing a chapter of Hatoful Boyfriend. The only one that I could admit to as being slightly non-standard is ":X" - I'm not sure where it came from, but I had been convinced that it meant saying something secretive, that you didn't want other people to hear (or were acting that you'd said by mistake). But as I discovered today, Pidgin interprets it - rather unexpectedly and embarrassingly - as a doe-eyed expression of besottedness.

Or it could mean that you're Miffy.