A Beginner's Guide to Effective Email:
Gestures
Kaitlin Duck Sherwood
ducky@netcom.com
While you are unable to accompany your words with hand or facial gestures,
there are several ASCII stand-ins for gestures.
Smileys
A facial gestures can be represented with "smiley": an ASCII drawing of
a facial expression. The most common three are
:-)
;-)
and
:-(
(To understand these symbols, turn your head counter-clockwise and look
at them sideways.)
While people will have slightly different interpretations of the
exact difference between the upper two, my personal opinion is that the
upper one means more "I'm happy" and the lower one means more "I'm kidding".
Typical examples:
Hey, guess what - I got the left-handed
thromblemeister spec done ahead of time! :-)
I'm on my way to fame and fortune now! ;-)
The second smiley, the ;-), indicates that you don't really believe that
your boss will give you that big raise. It is similar to but not as fierce
a rebutal as a "NOT!" appended to the end of a sentence:
Hey, guess what - I got the left-handed
thromblemeister spec done ahead of time! :-)
I'm on my way to fame and fortune now! NOT!
There are a wide range of ASCII gestures available to you, from ill %^P
to angry >:-< to astonished :-o, limited only by your
imagination. There is a whole Smiley
dictionary out there if you are feeling uncreative. (Note: I personally
think that some of the Smiley Dictionary definitions of the basic smileys
aren't a totally accurate reflection of the way I see smileys used, but
your milage may vary.)
Pause Equivalents
Imagine that you ask someone if you can turn the gain up to ten and a half.
He says, "Well", then pauses for a long time, scratches his head, looks
down at the floor, winces, grits his teeth, and says again, "Well", then
pauses and says, "It might not explode". You'd get a sense of just
how bad an idea it would be, while the text:
Well, it might not explode.
gives less information. I like to use lots of whitespace and typed-out
vocalizations of "I'm thinking" sounds, as follows:
Weeeellllll.... errr hem.
Wellll, it *might* not explode.
You can also use whitespace to make it more clear which words belong to
which clause. For example, the following is very difficult to parse
Did you want to use a left-handed thromblemeister or a
right-handed one with a half-twist or a Jackadoody brocket?
You could instead say:
Did you want to use
a left-handed thromblemeister
or
a right-handed one with
a half-twist
or
a Jackadoody brocket?
or
Did you want to use
a left-handed thromblemeister
or
a right-handed one with a half-twist
or
a Jackadoody brocket?
as appropriate. My mom goes one step further, and suggests hauling out
Mrs. Grundy's notes on outlines:
Did you want to use:
1. a left-handed thromblemeister
or
2. a right-handed one with a
a. half-twist
b. Jackadoody brocket
Creative Punctuation
I tend to use a lot of punctuation in what I call "comic book style". Instead
of saying:
I am very confused and a little upset. Why did
you give my report to Jack instead of Jill?
I'd say:
???!??! Why did you give my report to Jack
instead of Jill?!?
The question mark is kind of shorthand for a furrowed brow or a "huh?".
The exclamation mark is shorthand for amazement and possibly a scowl. The
two together seem to mean astonishment.
There is a long and proud tradition of using punctuation as a
placeholder for swearing, e.g. That #%?$(*! You will also sometimes
see an asterisk in place of important letters, usually the vowel, e.g.
That son of a b*tch! or That son of a b****! or very
rarely That s*n of a b*tch!. (In actual practice, this form of
self-censorship is rare; it is more common for people to either use the
whole word or omit it completely.)
Ducky
Last Modified
January 7, 2005
This document is in the public domain. You may copy it, modify it, shred
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