1869 Emotication

Communication. It's supposed to be the way we make each other understand what we are thinking. Sometimes it can go so wrong.
Like recently I was trying to spell out an emoticon to someone who'd never heard of them. And I found that deconstructing an emoticon pretty much destroyed the emotion of its meaning.
Communication by emoticon. Emotication?
Anyhow, try to spell out the emoticon of a smiley face.
"Wow, that made me colon close parenthesis."
"I flashed a colon close parenthesis at my girlfriend."
You see what I mean. Actually typing the colon and the close parenthesis to end up with a graphic smiley face is good. Describing it in words, not so much.
On another communication note, I was listening to an ad for Sylvan the other day. They promoted their tutoring service by having a women deliver a testimonial. She said she'd used Sylvan with her first kid, so when her second kid started having problems in school she took him to Sylvan too.
All well and good. Except the way she said it.
She said, "I decided to choose Sylvan."
I guess she was really decisive because she didn't just choose and she didn't just decide. She decided to choose.
Call me anti-redundant but it seems I learned in my schooling that it's important to speak and write economically. So I would just "choose to go to Sylvan." Or I would "decide to go to Sylvan."
But before that, I'll begin to think about the idea of pondering the choices inherent in making a decision that I may have second thoughts about if I elect to consider alternate outcome paths that may impact my final judgment.
Then I'll go to Sylvan for help with my communication skills.
That would make them colon parenthesis.
America, ya gotta love it.