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From: malloy@nprdc.navy.mil (Sean Malloy)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: Email: (adding inflection and body language)
Message-ID: <1020@limbo.Intuitive.Com>
Date: 19 Jul 90 23:53:54 GMT
Sender: taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com
Organization: Navy Personnel R&D Center, San Diego
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Approved: taylor@Limbo.Intuitive.Com

Nick Janow comments:

> As email becomes more prevalent, new methods of including inflection will
> arise...  I think these new styles of adding information to writing will 
> become more popular as more people encounter them.  I expect they'll also 
> affect the writing in areas other than email.

While the communities are not that disjoint, I have noticed that some
of these constructions are being used in APAs (Amateur Press
Associations -- sort of a hardcopy analogy to a mailing list: each
member of an apa writes up a 'zine with his comments on previous
issues, along with whatever new stuff he wants to say, makes enough
copies for each member, and gives them to the collator, who assembles
the zines and gives each member a copy). Most APAs that I am aware of
tend to be formed by special-interest groups in science-fiction
fandom; there are general-interest APAs, gaming APAs, an LP-record
APA, APAs on running SF conventions, artist's APAs, and so on.

Most of the people in APAs either are still using typewriters or don't
have a nifty word processor/printer combo to be able to use font changes
for emphasis (one of the other members of an APA I'm in uses WordPerfect,
but only has a daisy-wheel printer, because he's a professional writer
and needs the print quality at a cheap price), so the use of
inflection indicators originating from email tend to spread from the
netusers to the remainder of the membership of an APA.

There are also a number of constructs similar to 'talk mode' jargon
(see the recently posted jargon file), for example: 'RAEBNC', for 
'Read And Enjoyed But No Comment', 'HHOK', for 'Ha Ha Only Kidding',
analogous to the smiley, which is beginning to replace it, and '1/2 re',
for a comment which is only partially germane to what it is commenting
on.

The collator for an APA generally doesn't do anything editor-like to
the individual 'zines beyond making up a table of contents; as a
result, the content of APAs can come to be as flame-ridden as some
newsgroups. Fortunately, most APAs come out on a monthly schedule, so
flame wars are more drawn out and leisurely; people get more time to
think about what they're saying before the next issue comes out.

Sean Malloy