What the Patches do Gergith is Disable the auto-completion of the emoticons so that when you type : - ) (without spaces) nothing happens
But sinse you do not want that..
Also: i don't know if this will help at all but if you do not want to patch or anything for whatever reason try this:
After you have completed your Emoticon, press Ctrl + Z and the emoticon will Un-Auto-Complete and the text for the emoticon will be highlighted. You can then further press --> and Backspace to delete the last Character
Hope that helps.
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