EDITORIAL – E-mailed opinions often unclear

OMG. A new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and profiled in… OMG. A new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and profiled in Wired magazine proves that people aren’t very good at interpreting sarcasm in e-mails.

It turns out – no joke – that the written word is a difficult medium for conveying a type of humor based almost entirely on intonation and inflection. Misinterpreted e-mails are at the foundation of numerous corporate lawsuits and human resource issues.

College students, as part of the generation that has been using the Internet since adolescence, would seemingly be exempt from the crossed wires that the older generations are causing – but they’re not. Researchers studied pairs of undergraduate students as they wrote and responded to e-mails.

The writers, who were told to send messages about mundane topics, like the weather or campus food, in either a serious or sarcastic tone, thought that their partners would correctly guess the tone 80 percent of the time. The readers thought that they had guessed correctly about 90 percent of the time. In fact, only half of the messages were interpreted correctly.

Maybe these were just some exceptionally dumb students – j/k, j/k. Even the most intelligent person can misjudge the tone of an e-mail; as authors, people tend to “hear” their intended sarcasm – or lack thereof – as they write. As readers, people’s interpretation of a message can change based on their moods and expectations.

So how can the problem be fixed? In many situations, the answer is as simple as the abbreviations and emoticons so often reviled as destroyers of proper grammar. A winky face may not be the height of literary expression, but sometimes it’s good not to be taken seriously. It’s better to be seen as a little unsophisticated than to unknowingly offend someone online (a parenthetical can reinforce your intended tone, too).

Peppering an e-mail with LOLs and ROFLs isn’t the best way to look professional, though; there are some times when other strategies are needed. The easiest strategy? Avoidance.

Even though the study showed that most people think they are being perfectly understandable when they type, it’s difficult to make oneself clear via e-mail. A memo to the boss is probably not the best time to be witty, then.

Especially touchy topics probably shouldn’t be addressed in writing at all. There may be dozens of ways to communicate from one desk to another, but none of them will ever be as efficient as a face-to-face conversation. After all, sarcasm isn’t in the eye of the beholder. ;-).