How do I turn off smilies?

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

I just tried to put biblical citation in parentheses, and it got turned into a smilie. I do not want this. Indeed, I would like to turn off smilies in ALL my posts, since I consider them silly.

[cyberswede]

1. I don't think you can, but

...If you need to use text containing a colon or parentheses (or any other character that makes a smiliey), be sure to add a space between the symbols, and the smiley won't display.

...and you can use the "preview" button once before posting your post, to make sure.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

2. Thank you.

Mods, could you please have the software people come up with a way to turn off smilies in a post.

[Make7]

3. You can use html entities to prevent smilies from being displayed.

 is  :)  use  [font style="color:#000099;"]:)[/font]
 is  ;)  use  [font style="color:#000099;"];)[/font]
 is  :(  use  [font style="color:#000099;"]:([/font]

When you preview a post and find unintended smilies, note their location in the text and replace the last smilie character with its html entity. That should normally work - although sometimes you might need to replace the first character instead.

Even though that should work to disable smilies from being displayed, it is not without its own set of drawbacks. The main one being that if you go back to edit a post with html entities in it, you have to redo all of them or the smilies will show up in the edited post. Also using the preview button to double check how your post displays will undo the html entities if you hit the Post my reply! button from the preview screen. Just remember to hit your browser's back button to post from the pre-previewed text with the html entities still present.