Asterisks.

[LadyMarchHare]

Being WoWers we used / instead of * and sometimes if we had been playing too much, we would type ./whatever action even in an instant message, which should make sense to other wow players.

I used to chat in IRC for a few years and you had to use /me [insert action here] to get actions to show up. Granted this was before my SO so I got out the habit but for a long time I typed like that outside of the chatting channel. The only time I get confused about what's an action and what's meant as 'speaking' is when there's no symbol connotation and it runs right into the sentence like, "I thought that was pretty funny, laughs out loud". Then it just sounds like someone has a personality disorder.

[roosie]

I used them quite a lot when I was younger but not anymore. Neither does my SO. It's usually seen as 'kids thing' in my culture so none of my friends use them either for example on facebook. There's nothing wrong with them though: I think it's a nice way of expressing feelings and actions that are otherwise hard to explain online but I just can't use them naturally anymore.. Although I feel a sudden urge to do so now!

Also.. I'm not completely fluent in English so I had never heard that word before. Even after reading the comments on the first page I still had no idea what you were talking about. (shouldn't probably admit that..)

[MeeshaLenee]

I love using asterisks to turn things into actions! My SO and I do this all the time, it's amazing.... You can do so much with that. It doesn't really take the place of real-life interaction, but it sure does help.

*cuddles* is our biggest one, though we do go *flyingglomptacklepouncehugglesnugglenibbles* sometimes. >.> And other stuff I won't go into here.