Why Emails Are Misunderstood

werdna writes "The Christian Science Monitor has a piece on why it's so easy to misinterpret emails. From the article: 'First and foremost, e-mail lacks cues like facial expression and tone of voice. That makes it difficult for recipients to decode meaning well. Second, the prospect of instantaneous communication creates an urgency that pressures e-mailers to think and write quickly, which can lead to carelessness. Finally, the inability to develop personal rapport over e-mail makes relationships fragile in the face of conflict.'"

Comments

My opinion on this article...

[zaren]

:p

Another reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

is that some are from Nigerian royalty.

It's really hard to read their broken English. I spent at least 3 days emailing back and forth before I figured how to send them $10000 from my bank account.

Now, I'm just waiting for the cash to roll in......

Emoticons

[Killjoy_NL]

This is why I think people "invented" emoticons :)

Or am I mad at those people >:(

All these thoughts make me sad :(

and cry :`(

Who can be indifferent about these things :/

I would be ecstatic :D

Ah well, back to my nintendo (>',')>

Re:ummm

[robertjw]

Fortunately, nobody ever misunderstands spoken conversations.

Re:inflection, emphasis, tone, etc. usually missin

[linvir]

Somewhat ironically, you should have been more specific. English phrases are ambiguous, not the language itself. When speaking, people make up for it with intonation, where other languages would make distinctions using word order and choice. It's the reason I tend to use a lot if italicised words in my typing.

I have been waiting.

[Foo2rama]

This exact piece of research comes out every year and it is just as earth shattering every time. Thank god that they got it out before the middle of the year and I didn't suffer any anxiety from the delay of the release of this important piece of research. Perhaps since this is written medium did you get the sarcasm?


Ok kids we got this, yes this issue spawned emoticons, can we move on to more important things like Gizmodo execs and Enzo's cut in half.

But sometimes emails are supposed to offend

[i am kman]

Actually, I've found most emails correctly carry the emotion of the sender - particularly if their very mad or frustrated.

The problem is people feel much freer to express extreme anger, curse, and belittle people over email than they ever would in real life.

Look at many of the posts to this website - while some people really are complete assholes, I'd bet a significant fraction of the posts here would NEVER be said in a face-to-face conversation (particularly if someone dares to actually compliment Windows). That's precisely because emails correctly convey emotion that most people won't express in real life.

Re:inflection, emphasis, tone, etc. usually missin

[Moofie]

How about "Poorly written English is ambiguous."

That's why God made CAPITAL letters

[ToxikFetus]

When one want's to convey importance in an email, merely capitalize every letter in the important word: I didn't STEAL the money. Of course, the problem with this approach becomes readily apparent: How do you emphasize the 'I'? Simple, remove all capitalization from any other word (and for good measure, get rid of that pesky punctuation, except those cute little ellipses). So, as an example:

mr smith...
these accusations are an outrage... I didnt steal the money... talk with bob from accounting...
toodles...
ted from the mailroom

See? Clear as a bell. Obviously, ted didn't steal the money. And those ellipses help each sentence flow smoothly into the next.

Bonus suggestion: If an entire message is important, JUST CAPITALIZE EVERY LETTER. THAT WILL FORCE PEOPLE TO LISTEN AND MAKE YOU SOUND IMPORTANT.

Re:inflection, emphasis, tone, etc. usually missin

[glsunder]

Read each sentence out loud, with emphasis on the bolded word.
        * I didn't steal the money. ...

I can only imagine thousands of cubical dwellers reaction to their neighbor muttering "I didn't steal the money" over and over again.

Tommarow, lets go for "I won't kill the president today".

Importance of Capitalization

[SPravin]

I helped my uncle Jack off the horse
v/s
I helped my uncle jack off the horse

The 5 rules of e-mail

[DrLex]

After years of internet usage, I have distilled 5 rules for an e-mail to be understandable for the average person.

1. Never ask more than 1 question in an e-mail. People will only answer either the first or the last question. If it's really necessary to ask multiple questions, make the mail look like a questionnaire (i.e. put all questions together, bulleted with numbers, with no text in between).
2. If you ask a question, always put it at the very end of the mail, and don't forget the question mark.
3. Never try to tell people more than 1 important thing in an e-mail.
4. Never try to tell people an important thing and ask an important question in the same e-mail. They will most likely only read the important thing and forget about the question, even if you follow rule 2.
5. Keep your e-mails so short that it's actually impossible to tell anything useful, but if you try to explain it properly it will be too long anyway to fit in the average person's attention span, and people will even understand less than from the too short mail.

Only if you really know your correspondent well, you can deviate from these rules.

Re:inflection, emphasis, tone, etc. usually missin

[aafiske]

Woah, dude, good choice! It works really well. I've been trying it out! I won't kill the president today, I won't kill the president today, I won't kill the president today, I won't kill the president today. Try it out!

One sec, someone's at the door.