Hi. My name is Rose. And I'm a smilie addict. *ducks*
I don't overuse smilies as Lee suggested many of his members do (and boy do they!) However I try to add them whenever and wherever possible to help get my point across.
When you communicate with someone face-face or by voice, it's easy to get your message across the way you want to with body language and tone of voice. However when you're dealing with a medium of simply text on a screen ... it can be hard to get the right message across. So ... smilies are useful.