a684@mindlink.UUCP (Nick Janow) (07/20/90)
James G. Smith writes: > Of course, email doesn't have the same potential for inflection and body > language as real presence, but then, the reverse is also true. A lot > depends on the creativity and vitality of the writer, which is also true > of speakers... As email becomes more prevalent, new methods of including inflection will arise. There's the smiley face. There's also methods to emphasise words: capitalization, _underlining_ (or full underlining if your terminal has that capability), reverse video, different fonts. etc. I also find myself using brackets (to make an aside comment), quotation marks to signify words not using the "regular" meaning (not always by the proper rules), these marks '<>' to contain body or facial language <jumping with joy> and '...' to signify "follow this line of thought": "Just as he finished smoothing the fresh concrete, someone let the dog out..." I think these new styles of adding information to writing will become more popular as more people encounter them. I expect they'll also affect the writing in areas other than email. I keep wanting to put smileys on things I write, but realize that few people outside of the bbs community would understand it...yet. :) Nick Janow
malloy@nprdc.navy.mil (Sean Malloy) (07/20/90)
Nick Janow comments: > As email becomes more prevalent, new methods of including inflection will > arise... I think these new styles of adding information to writing will > become more popular as more people encounter them. I expect they'll also > affect the writing in areas other than email. While the communities are not that disjoint, I have noticed that some of these constructions are being used in APAs (Amateur Press Associations -- sort of a hardcopy analogy to a mailing list: each member of an apa writes up a 'zine with his comments on previous issues, along with whatever new stuff he wants to say, makes enough copies for each member, and gives them to the collator, who assembles the zines and gives each member a copy). Most APAs that I am aware of tend to be formed by special-interest groups in science-fiction fandom; there are general-interest APAs, gaming APAs, an LP-record APA, APAs on running SF conventions, artist's APAs, and so on. Most of the people in APAs either are still using typewriters or don't have a nifty word processor/printer combo to be able to use font changes for emphasis (one of the other members of an APA I'm in uses WordPerfect, but only has a daisy-wheel printer, because he's a professional writer and needs the print quality at a cheap price), so the use of inflection indicators originating from email tend to spread from the netusers to the remainder of the membership of an APA. There are also a number of constructs similar to 'talk mode' jargon (see the recently posted jargon file), for example: 'RAEBNC', for 'Read And Enjoyed But No Comment', 'HHOK', for 'Ha Ha Only Kidding', analogous to the smiley, which is beginning to replace it, and '1/2 re', for a comment which is only partially germane to what it is commenting on. The collator for an APA generally doesn't do anything editor-like to the individual 'zines beyond making up a table of contents; as a result, the content of APAs can come to be as flame-ridden as some newsgroups. Fortunately, most APAs come out on a monthly schedule, so flame wars are more drawn out and leisurely; people get more time to think about what they're saying before the next issue comes out. Sean Malloy
sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) (07/24/90)
Books, Novels, etc have been using the written word to get accross emotions and such long before we ever had email, or TV or Radio. The written word can be used effectively in the hands of a good writer. Long before there was ever a telephone much less a computer, people communicated by letters. Email is not some johnny-come-lately that will destroy us emotionally and make us 'robots'. Rather, think of it as going back to the good ol' days. (personally I get a lot more out of reading a novel than seeing a movie) John Sparks
jeffl@sybase.com (Jeff Lichtman) (07/24/90)
>> Of course, email doesn't have the same potential for inflection >> and body language... > As email becomes more prevalent, new methods of including > inflection will arise... But much of inflection and body language are unconcious. People don't think as they speak, "This is a sardonic comment, so I will speak a little more nasally than usually and move my head like this." Written inflection is nice, but it requires the author to think about subtexts like emotional content in order to put them into writing. Of course, any good writer does this expression already, by choosing words carefully, and any good reader looks for clues in the author's word choices. Doing so is a lot of work, which is one of the reasons that speaking and listening are easier than writing and reading. The main advantage to written inflection is lack of ambiguity, which makes things easier for both writers and readers. I doubt that written inflection will ever be as flexible and versatile as spoken inflection and body language, but that's just a gut feeling. Jeff Lichtman