bewing@kean.mun.ca (10/30/89)
After reading the Rand report on network etiquette , we found that they have covered some of the issues that were of concern to us when we initiated our study into e-style; the use of abbreviations and smilies can help to informalize the communication when this is required; IOO [in our opinion] much of the communication that takes place on bitnet is of a informal nature; a discussion between parties interested in a particular issue; we lack the face-to-face aspect that a conference, workshop or similar forum would provide and as our words appear in type they take the more formal print form. smileys lend some face-to-face aspects and can include feelings. abbreviations such as IOO help keep the content in perspective ; however, as Rand suggest this may not be enough so perhaps we can omit normal grammar rules such as capitalization; meaning cannot be scarificed but an occasional typo does no harm; we realize this may be a difficult cocnept for educators and others to accept but we are dealing with a new medium, relatively speaking, and we feel that a new way of communicating requires new rules. Comments are most welcome. :-) Bob ewing Jocelyn J. Paquette