Quote from http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/11/dont-flame-me-bro.html
[i]"Another factor influencing online communication, according to Epley, is simply the risk of miscommunication involved with text-based messages, which are inherently more ambiguous. At the same time, he notes, email “has the feel of informality – we just fire something off”, even though we probably ought to treat it with the same care as a written letter. And, as most people probably know, this can cause problems for both the sender and the receiver.
Epley explains further: “If I send a joke in an email, it’ll be ambiguous when it gets to you. That’s hard for me to detect: the joke is funny, and I use that knowledge to judge how you’ll interpret it.” But the receiver may not realise that the email is meant as a joke – particularly if they are in a bad mood to start with – and that can lead to horrified responses like “I can’t believe you just said that” and to an unnecessary argument."[/i]
Wow! It’s a wonder that anyone ever understands anything I write. ;D :
