Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!tale From: tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: e-style prelim observations Message-ID: <1989Oct25.064717.22465@rpi.edu> Date: 25 Oct 89 06:47:17 GMT References: <21166@kean.mun.ca> Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY Lines: 72 In <21166@kean.mun.ca> bewing@kean.mun.ca writes: Bob> because we type our thoughts, ideas, information, they Bob> appear as the printed word which in our society carries Bob> more weight than teh spoken word; yet what we are keying Bob> is our conversations; i.e. what we would say face-to-face and Bob> this is where the flaming begins; a confusion Bob> happens; spoken words are emphermal, they disappear Bob> in the air ; teh printed word may linger forever; people Bob> act strongly to print. People react strongly to so many things, print being merely one of them. One thing working against electronic communication is the unavailability of tone or body language; conversely, it sometimes works for it. As an example, I have one friend who I simply cannot communicate with via computer -- we are so physical in our normal interaction that misunderstandings frequently arise when the machine is between us, in spite of our excellent personal relationship. Someone else I know I would rather talk to over the computer rather than face-to-face. The main reason for this is that he closes up in a face-to-face situation, making his personality quite different. Bob> it may be necessary to use a hybrid writing style to Bob> reduce this confusion. Reduce? Do you think the message you have composed reduces confusion? I think it makes a reader work harder to understand it all, which does not aid communication. Bob> one day what we key in may appear as handwritting or be audible Bob> but for now we need to adapt what we have; there are no visual Bob> clues to aid our meaning; to some exten smileys help. To some extent, but not even everyone reacts to them in the same way. This is just another way in which we all interpret _life_ differently. More examples: Some people put stage cues like and in their writings. I don't like them much, but I don't voice my opinion about it much because they're not really hurting anything. Why don't I like them? Well, s though because they're just not the same as the real thing (plus I don't know that I'd _want_ the real thing from the person who sent it to me -- mean sounding thought, but true) and s make me think of either the Cheshire Cat or a lecher. By the way, why do some people feel it necessary to put two or more question marks after every question they type? Looks to me like they have a bad case of high blood pressure. Bob> in oredr to informalize we may want to omit capitalization Bob> ot accept the odd typo; What are you considering "the odd typo"? Every three words confuses things a lot. Good grammar helps both written and spoken communica- tion. If not for the fact that your article was addressing these very issues, and supposedly illustrating one perspective, my reaction to it would be very negative. The form of this article generally indicates someone who is either uneducated or simply does not care about the quality of work. It does not mean that necessarily either is the case; if, however, the message exists in the public forum at all, it presumably exists to communicate information to other people. The desired result is much more easily obtained through a message that appears to have had at least a little effort put into it. Bob> add shorts froms as IMO [in my opinion] and ICBW [i could be Bob> wrong] in order to indicate that the words are not fact. Whee. Great. At least you've taking the pretentious H out of IMO. Perhaps you could moderate news.newusers.questions, too. Expect a question regarding abbreviations and smileys to appear in your mailbox at least once a week. Dave -- (setq mail '("tale@pawl.rpi.edu" "tale@itsgw.rpi.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet"))