I saw a thread that I had missed originally (now locked), where a discussion devolved into accusations of racism and insults, and it was all based on the use of the emotive word, snicker (a small, usually somewhat derisive giggle), bracketed by the symbol *. According to a (sadly misinformed) poster, when the word is bracketed by this symbol, it becomes a racist term. This is of course incorrect, as the word 'snickers' is, to my knowledge, never racist although it is phonetically similar to a racist word. But what intrigued me was the poster's insistence that the use of * made it a derogatory racist term.
I am a longtime role player, starting with D&D and through several other games and modes, including amateur acting as a young man. In typed role play, when one is indicating an action, usually emotive, people often use * to differentiate from spoken work. For example, *grins*, *laughs*, *cries*, and yes, *giggles* or *snickers*. Used like this, the * indicates that this is an action you are undertaking. It would be odd, in conversation, for someone to say 'Giggles'. However, not so odd for someone to giggle, and *giggles* is shorter and more fluid than "I am giggling".
I brought this up mainly because the thread in which this occurred wasn't the first time this has happened. I was playing an alt shot match in the past when my partner used *snickers* after an inside joke I had made, and one of our opponents got upset about it. So, just to clear things up:
*snickers* is not, nor has it ever been, a racist term, any more than *shudders* or *sticks his tongue out* or *does the Snoopy Happy Dance*. It just means someone is giggling softly to themselves. And any time in the future, if you see a word bracketed by *, check if the word or phrase inside the *s describes an action. And if that action isn't *breaks his foot off in your @ss*, just leave it be.
And, I have seen -cries-, ~cries~, and other punctuation symbols used instead of *.