So much seems to be lost in translation across modern rapid messaging media (IM/e-mail). How can mere typed words express fear, love, anger, arousal, joy, or grief? Unless you're in the habit of AIM chatting in poetry. Especially with the rapid pace of "instant" messaging....... which is SO not instant.

If I had it my way, I'd never chat, not use a cell, and not have voice mail. It's an illusion that we can get in touch whenever, wherever, so why live the lie?

This doesn't rule out smoke signals. I would use landing zone signal smoke grenades. To express my multi-colored moods. I have an entire palette of emotion, you see. Which I can express completely in the gaseous medium.

Admittedly, I'm sure Avenger would disapprove of any "long distance" calls I might make. But think about it, smoke signals would add so much significance to each thing said: every word is a trade-off. Do I *really* need to say this? Is it worth accelerating impending climactic doom?

I've always wondered what it's like to be that super quiet kid in grade school, who all of a sudden, at the end of school gives an entire monologue, and everyone eats up every word and is like "holy crap, so-and-so TALKS?!" It's like an economy of communication. Does the more you say devalue what you say, that is, the weight of your words in the minds of others?

Discuss.

The trick to expressing emotions in text form is for the person to already know you; well enough at least to understand the way you personally use emoticons, punctuation, etc.

Otherwise you end up with gross ambiguities and misunderstandings, which is why I think that so many people go so overboard on the internet with what should just be nuances of speech and intonation in order to make sure that others can understand. And yet even still, it's difficult in some cases to determine whether, for example, a person is being sarcastic or completely serious, unless (as mentioned before) you already know them well enough to have a grasp on what kind of opinions they hold, etc. This also means it isn't easy to figure out when a person is "trolling", or whether they are trying to have a legitimate discussion with an unpopular viewpoint.

Perhaps we need some sort of emotional markup language which when applied to our typed words would give them a deeper meaning.

As both a writer and someone who has made many friends thanks to the Internet, I'd say this is a poor argument. You can communicate just as well (if differently) with the written word, and the secondary literacy/orality as it were is just as important a means of communication as any other, with its own strengths and weaknesses, just like any other.

To answer your bold.

Yes.

This is interesting to me, because it touches upon the notion that people who've known each other for a long time seem to have their own "language." The longer and more intimate their association, the more subtle this language becomes.

In the intro to the reprint of "Sam 'n Max: Surfin' the Highway," Steve Purcell, compares Sam 'n Max to twins who have always been around one another have have their own, quirky way of communicating (Now that's what I call a high-brow literary reference! :awesome:). It's these quirks that improve our ability to communicate. But across the anonymity of the information superhighway, these subtleties are rendered more difficult by orders of magnitude.

An emotional markup language would indeed be interesting. What we have for that thus far is pretty lacking. :colbert::psyduck:;), but think about this: our ability to communicate and express ourselves could be constrained by lingual limitations, like the extent of a person's vocabulary, or onerous grammatical constructs. Emotions are so complex that I struggle to imagine any language that could approach comprehensive encapsulation.

I just wanted to say that I do see how this could seem the case, but I don't think it's as simple as that.

In a time where people can't even type out full words, I don' t think it's the quantity of the typed word, rather how you convey it. Just about everyone here types and spells like it would be spoken to someone's face instead of stupid IM abbreviations, which just come off as childish.
There have been many rather lengthy posts on here that make their point rather well, without becoming "dear god let it end" posts. I don't think you can make a blanket statement that talking/typing more renders your message moot.

It definitely depends on whom I'm chatting with, but I can usually fully understand the conveyed meaning in instant messages. When I'm sending them, I try to use emoticons to assist in interpretation. Texts depend of whether or not they speak in stupid.

First and foremost, typed/written words will NEVER express those emotions like spoken word. Ever. However, BOTH can be totally mis-interpreted. They can be interpreted wrong by the listener/reader, or purposely misleading by the speaker/writer.

I took a Business Communication class once, and we talked about what would be the best form of communication for certain things. Most things, Spoken word was always on the top. But some things are too informal to bother with the spoken word (Either in person, or on phone.) The class mostly focused on actually how to properly write
business written communication.

In Business, everything is pretty clear and direct. You try to use the least amount of adverbs and adjectives as possible and make clear sentences.


However in places online like Forums and IM were people get angry, sarcastic, etc ... it gets all confusing sometimes. Really no good way to interpret things, or convey them.

You're trying to convey emotion through an emotionless, ubiquitous, and anonymous medium. IMs et al get mistranslated or misinterpreted because there isn't a face for us to see (or hear) the words expressed. Actions and gestures are a language in of itself. Some stuff is easy to read like anger through the use of vulgarity and ALL CAPITALS. Sarcasm is probably the hardest.

Re: Bolded Text.
So long as you keep what you are saying interesting and thought-provoking, your words won't devalue. If you keep repeating the same bloody mantra lung after lung, people are going to want you to STFU. Note to TV pundits: read that sentence again.

Everyones been spot on with what they've been saying IMO.

To shed a different light -- non audible forms of communication (internet, email, sms messaging) work great for communicating what YOU want to convey, but as far as what the other person perceives what your trying to convey.. well.. thats a whole other ball game. So its a 50/50 shot. As far as a form of effective communication you could say yes, it is, but since the true defenition of communication is an understanding between both parties, if the receiving end isn't processing you properly, then communication was not established.. so no.

Theres no easy way to summarize or simplify all that.

I think a lot of people missed this. You CAN do just as well, if not better, at conveying yourself online. The catch is it's really easy to get lazy and just type whatever first comes to mind then hit enter. If you're trying to convey something over text, you have to put time and effort into it, just like you're writing a short story. That's what you are essentially doing when talking over IM - writing a short story. You just write half of it.*

If you put effort into how you convey yourself, you can do just fine.

That being said, I think WAY too many people try to say important things online because it's easier. You're talking to a computer instead of to a person. While it is a lot harder to say "I love you" for the first time, or "I'm breaking up with you" in person, you lose the human element if you do it online. I think too many people take the easy way out.

I was going to say something thought provoking, but then I got lazy. So here is an emoticon that I feel perfectly expresses what I want to say, but which you all assign a different meaning to. You will all understand what I mean by it. You will all understand something different. You will all be wrong. Nobody will care.

As someone who's "taken the easy way out" and been successful, I'll throw in my input.
First, in case anyone doesn't know this still, I met my wife on the internet. Further, I propsed to her on the internet (its important to note at that point I'd known her in person for a total of about 3 months, but in actuality for over a year.). Thus, I consider myself an expert on this subject.

Now, my opinion is that text/IM communication can be equally effective, and in many cases, much *more* effective than spoken communication. Some of the advantages of written communication are:

1) structure. Notice I'm breaking this down into bullet points. Try doing that in a verbal communication. It can happen, but is much easier when writing. The structure of written communication allows for a more concise, logical interpretation.

2) Proof. Ever been in a verbal argument where you know you said one thing but the other person heard something else? With written communication you can go back and look over what you said and what the other person said. Thus, if a miscommunication does occur, it is easier to identify and correct the fault.

3) Proofreading. Ever said something then realized it didn't come out how you intended? Everyone has. With written communication, you can analyze what you're about to say, and re-word touchy subjects to ensure you're getting your point across without implying anything beyond your intended meaning.

4) no/reduced time pressure. Written communication tends to allow more time to analyze a response before sending it off. Not only can you think about how to word what you want to say, but you can think about what you want to say in the first place. This is especially true with text msg conversations (remember I'm a champion texter with about 8k msgs sent/received a month) where participants typically send one response at a time. (With IM, it can be a bit more hectic.)

5) Comfort. As has been brought up, talking through written tends to be less confrontational, and thus can be used to discuss delicate issues in a fairly low-key, unthreatening environment. This allows people to discuss sensitive issues either without getting overly emotional, or feeling more comfortable allowing those emotions to occur. This is somewhat double-edged though, because sometimes the participant will be overly carefree because of that sense of safety.

That's the major advantages as I see them. I may think of one or two more in the next day or so and if so, I'll post later. It is important to note though, that communication is an art form requiring skill, regardless of how you accomplish it. Some people will be good at it and some won't. Some will prefer one method over another. What works for one person may not work for another. This is where problems arise. The effectiveness of any form of communication changes depending on an infinite number of factors, so I don't believe it's fair to say any one form is superior.

I think when Grismath was saying VERBAL communication, he really meant the sum of verbal communication and body language in a face-to-face discussion. Body language is a much more concise and effective means of communicating emotion.

Nevertheless, there are many ways to interpret the same gestures.

At least there is the illusion of comprehensive explicitness in written communication. If I have expressed myself clearly in writing, as Sarn states, everything should be "on the page." Granted, the more artistic or familiar (i.e. "abstract" in both cases) the writing becomes, the more is assumed or left underlying for interpretation and discovery.

If a "picture is worth a thousand words," a context-rich, dynamic face-to-face conversation blasts the interlocutor, the other person in the conversation, with huge amounts of data. Impressively, the human brain can process all of this, and typically different people perceive the same mannerisms the same way. I suppose body language, in its most basic form, is a universal language among people.

I just have to imagine that with so much data being transmitted (much of it involuntarily by the transmitter!), there exist humongous opportunities for misinterpretation. A personal example is my poor eyesight. I often wander around without my glasses on, and there have been many instances in which people have tried to communicate silently with me, through gestures or, even worse, slight facial expressions. I rarely pick up on these, and so that kind of communication is often a struggle. There's a statistic floating around out there that some majority percentage of face-to-face communication is nonverbal, with "what's explicitly being said" making up 10% or less of the message.

If this is a "written vs. holistic verbal" discussion, I would argue that written communication is, in principle, better (more suited for its intended purpose). In practice, with our culturally-loaded and grammatically arcane languages, this is not necessarily the case. But if we go back to pure logic, mathematics, everything is "there." If we could theoretically construct a language that encoded everything you wanted to say in a message, nothing more, nothing less, and your readers could decode everything you wanted to say, nothing more, nothing less, the written form of communication would definitely win out.

Then again... (and this is just hitting me!) I'm presupposing that the communicators have to be "trained/educated" in this language for it to work, and that our stumbling blocks may be the product of incomplete lingual mastery (e.g. someone with a poor vocabulary or poor reading comprehension skills). In essence, we are already have the tools "wired into us" for perfect communication, but our reliance on modern communication media (IM/e-mail/text, etc) is stunting these tools, making us less familiar with the vastly more expressive form of communication we already possess, from our tone of voice, to our facial expressions, to our gestures: ourselves.

Yes.

I feel like it devalues the conversation though. I recently went through a rather complicated and frustrating episode with a female, and while sometimes things occured offline, and sometimes online, we always agreed to meet the next day and talk about it. I think that talking about it in person shows respect and you want to connect with them on a more human level.

Sarn's situation is a bit different due to long distance.

Text might be a superior form of data transfer, and if you are a good writer you can even convey emotions... but I don't feel it has the same impact as it does in person. "I love you" for the first time will never be a better experience online than it is in person.

Same goes for over the phone...

I contend that a first "I love you" in person only trumps phone/online because in person it's can conveniently be followed up with lurve activities. A little more challenging over other media.

cyberz seks

interacting in person is always better.

I've eliminated instant messaging from my personal life. I feel like it gives far too instant access to me when I'd rather a person have to put some thought into contacting me. If given a choice I'll choose a text message asking to speak in person.