I was recently reading an email from someone and realized that they were trying to be funny. Then I realized that I often get email from people who make an attempt at humor or sarcasm. But many times I misinterpret the senders intent.
I’m quite capable of taking something that was supposed to be funny; totally out of context: my feelings were hurt or I thought the sender was egotistical or weird or a number of other (mostly negative) things.
When we are face-to-face with people we can
- “read” them,
- catch the subtitles of body language
- or at least see a smile or a frown.
We miss these things in an email.
If you have any concern about how your humor or sarcasm will be interpreted
don’t write it.
OR
you can try using an EMOTICON (but this is not a fail-safe way to avoid insulting someone)
There are many emoticons to choose from and a lot more we can learn about the nuances of email language.
At a minimum I suggest:
🙂 smile
🙁 sad
😉 wink
And :
I read a very interesting article on the psychology of it all (communicating and email). The article is “Egocentrism Over E-Mail: Can We Communicate as Well as We Think?” by Justin Kruger, Nicholas Epley, Jason Parker and Zhi-Wen Ng.