Ideal emotes sometimes need to be balanced by the need for a timely emote, as was previously touched on by Jaz. If you are doing a scene with a couple of characters and everyone is taking their time to respond, then detailed emotes are wonderful. If you are engaged in a five, six, ten, or dozen player interaction or if the interaction is quick paced with many things to respond to, an emote needs to be timely.
In a slow paced scene, this might work nicely:
Syrinx's eyes widen as she audibly gasps. Her face pales and her hands start to shake as she stumbles backward a few steps, her gaze locked on the approaching dragon.
Now, in the faced paced scene, you don't have the time to write a lengthy detail of that response. Instead, you may need to use a very standard action. However, just because the typist does not have time to write three lines doesn't mean the character isn't reacting just as much. So, a limited suggestion of the emotion (the what, not the why) could be useful. This may be justified in the situation because your character is doing a loud, visible reaction that even in all the hubub, someone might see and given the context, recognize as the emotion:
Syrinx's eyes widen as she stares at the dragon in terror.
Syrinx stumbles away from the dargon with a gasp of terror.
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