Quote: "Do the people who propose these theories not get letters in the post? Do they not send each other Christmas cards?:

See - that's the part that shows that you fail to understand the problem. At all. I can send my mum, my SO or my brother short notices - and they will get what I mean. Because they already know me. They know my style of talking, my sense of humor and my way to argue. I'm not going to send you a christmas card over the internet, without previous encounters.

See - if you present this text of yours here, I'm lost. Are you _serious_ about that "bullshit"? I'm not sure. I don't know you and it doesn't make much sense to me. Either you are serious and we have to disagree a lot and I just don't (so far) get what your problem with my position is, or you just make a joke. Maybe you are chuckling in your chair and just want to spread some HN link love. Maybe you actually DO believe that emotions and intents are clearly visible in text.

If the last point is true I wonder if you had any classes/lessons where you were told to determine the authors intention - and if you have enough confidence to claim that yes, you knew _exactly_ what Mark Twain was trying to tell you in each of his books.

Er - I guess that was a long way to say: I call bullshit on both your argumentation and your motives. Feel free to read this with the image of me being amused, bewildered, confused, angry, annoyed or just neutral. Have fun.

If we expect to have an economy of so-called 'knowledge workers' who thrive on the basis of knowing stuff and communicating that to people as and when required, decent writing skills seems a pretty damn important thing to have. Instead, we don't teach people to write properly (and people don't seem to aspire to learn writing) then we wonder why they can't write properly and their e-mails don't communicate the message they are trying to convey.

I'm saying that we shouldn't blame e-mail or technology because some people are crap at writing e-mail any more than we should blame Flickr and Facebook for people being crap at photography.

When someone can't communicate online excuses like "e-mail lacks visual cues" are just that - excuses.

What you call for - as far as I can understand it - is a norm, a way to measure quality for texts. I say that this isn't realistically possible.

This works for people you know (easily, they can grok what you wanted to say). It might work for peers (they understand where you coming from, share some experiences and might know what you want to get at). In general, it doesn't work at all.

Things you completely ignore:

- Language: My first post started with the difference between reading in your native language and a foreign one. Depending on your readers understanding of your language you cannot transport your intentions in a reliable way. A smile, on the other hand, goes a long way to show that you are not actually mocking him/her and are a friendly person. Good luck, trying to make that universal.

- Feedback You can write a loooong text about a subject and cause me to explode when I read that midway through. If you tell me the same story face to face, you could probably read my expressions (depending again on context, how familiar we are, if you pay attention etc.) and navigate around some hurdles. You really want to tell a nice story about the Iraq war but notice how my mood turned darker? Good chance to ask me about my opinion and to take it slowly. How do you solve that in a text based conversation? Right.

- Context/Previous knowledge: You can talk about things I have no clue about, rather easily. Depending on your attitude and style of writing I might feel excluded, maybe offended, although it's entirely my fault. Face to face you could be Prince Charming. Without that and any knowledge of your readers schooling/education/knowledge, how are you going to make sure that you don't accidently embarass them?

I don't blame email or technology. The problem isn't new either. As long as we've been able to communicate in writing first, without knowing the other person, this problem existed. It's not about "emails". Neither about "technology sucks". It's about "words, without more context (previous encounters, a similar character, a shared history), don't carry the full information".

For me it's like a blurred image. If I know the thing that is depicted, I can clearly recognize it. If not, it's guesswork. You can try and make it easier, by blowing up your text to explain as much as possible and to try to (and fail) solve any ambiguous meaning, but in the end I'm still lost. On the recipients end, I have to rely on my information alone to understand what information you want to provide.

I have some good friends that are blind. In your world, they wouldn't miss that much even outside of online conversations: The text carries all the meaning, right? Nuances of the voice? Nice, but not necessary if the author is disciplined. Making faces, smiling etc.? Hey, you don't need that.

Are you really, really serious?

And you say "you have to learn how to write", when I say that reading is the part where the problem occurs? Can you really write "for everyone"? I'd argue that so far you cannot write for me, I'm still unsure if you are just trying to contine this discussion in a productive way (hints are some writing related parts of the comment, imo) or if you just want to talk me down (most of the comment, imo).

See 1, 2 and 3 and check if you actually _can_ write clear enough for everybody out there.

(FWIW: I used "me" and "I" in this text as a general replacement for "you" and "one", i.e. just examples. In addition, all examples are completely artifical as well and you cannot guess my feelings/viewpoints from this comment)