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No, I'm Not LOL
by Mad Dog
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We can’t be bothered to use a spellchecker, forget
everything we ever knew about capitalization and punctuation, and work
hard to preserve our precious natural keystroke resources by typing
“u” for you, “2” for to, and “b4” for before. |
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Email is a wonderful
thing. It allows us to keep in touch with friends and family, alienate
them by passing around jokes we don’t want to waste memory cells
remembering, and work anywhere and anytime we have access to a computer,
a Blackberry, or a cell phone. And break out in a cold sweat if we
don’t have any of those gadgets handy because, well, someone might
have sent us an email offering a safe herbal way to enlarge a body part
we don’t have and we don’t know about it yet. Life is tough in the
21st century.
Like any form of communication
though, it has its problems. We dash off emails quickly, forgetting that
a sentence is supposed to have both a subject and a predicate. Remember,
multiple exclamation points at the end of a sentence don’t take the
place of a subject. We can’t be bothered to use a spellchecker, forget
everything we ever knew about capitalization and punctuation, and work
hard to preserve our precious natural keystroke resources by typing
“u” for you, “2” for to, and “b4” for before. And then we
wonder why what we write is misinterpreted.
Sure we can use emoticons, those
silly little punctuation combinations that kinda sorta look like a
smiley face if you tilt your head to the side, squint, and have Dali’s
imagination. There are also abbreviations like LOL for laughing out
loud, OMG for oh my god, and WTHAYTTS for what the hell are you trying
to say. Yet in spite of all these tools that make you feel like a
12-year-old girl no matter what your actual age and sex, it’s still
amazingly hard to make sure you get your point across.
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Be careful how you express things. Put yourself in the
recipient’s place and think of every possible way they could
misinterpret what you just wrote. Because trust me, they will.
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How hard? According to a study published in the Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology (motto: “At least we have a nice
personality”), people manage to correctly interpret the tone and mood
of an email only half the time. In other words, you might as well read
an email and toss a coin to decide whether the person who sent it was
serious, kidding, flirty, sarcastic, or angry because you misinterpreted
their last email. To compound this, respondents thought they could
interpret the tone correctly 90 percent of the time, so not only are we
bad at it, we don’t have the first inkling of how bad we really are.
Denial and self-delusion can be wonderful things.
The problem, of course, is that even
if you type visual clues there’s no body language to tip off the
recipient. No raised eyebrow, slight smile, rolling of the eyes, or
bulging vein in the neck. Maybe our computers should automatically take
a photograph as we write each email and attach it so the other person
can see what kind of mood we’re in. Okay, scratch that. It’s early
in the morning and I just looked in the mirror. Next idea.
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Remember,
there’s no “Retrieve” button on your keyboard, though lord knows
I’d pay big bucks to have one, so don’t let that twitchy finger do
its thing without your brain being fully engaged and in complete
agreement. |
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So what can you do? Well, for starters you can take a little
extra time when writing an email. Sure you’re busy scanning news
headlines, paying bills online, bidding on a broken Hummel figurine on
eBay, and deleting forwarded jokes you sent around days ago, all at the
same time, but taking a few seconds more on each email won’t hurt. Not
too much, anyway. Next, be careful how you express things. Put yourself
in the recipient’s place and think of every possible way they could
misinterpret what you just wrote. Because trust me, they will. When you
write “Gotta go” will they think you’re late for an appointment,
don’t want to spend any more time writing to them, or need to visit
the bathroom? Rewrite the email until there are only two possible
interpretations. Hey, you’re not going to do any better than that. And
finally, stop before you hit “Send.” That’s right. Hold your
finger in the air — better yet put it in your pocket where it can’t
get itchy and get you in trouble. Then take a deep breath and read the
email again. Remember, there’s no “Retrieve” button on your
keyboard, though lord knows I’d pay big bucks to have one, so don’t
let that twitchy finger do its thing without your brain being fully
engaged and in complete agreement.
We all have a “whoops!” email
story. You know, like responding to someone in a group email by saying
what a jerk someone else is and hitting “reply to all” by mistake.
Recently, Eric Govan, a PR assistant for the Golden State Warriors, sent
an email full of photographs with the subject line “ghetto prom.” He
didn’t just send it to his friends, but to his media list. You know,
lightweights like ESPN, CBS, and Sports Illustrated. Even though he sent
out an apology 16 minutes later, within an hour he was history.
So be careful. Take your time.
Remember the grammar they taught you in, well, grammar school. And above
all, try to forget that “reply to all” even exists. And if all else
fails, turn off the computer and write a letter. Just don’t forget to
include a photograph so the recipient knows for sure what kind of mood
you were in.
©2006 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country. Smile
while you read them.
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