A:
I wish there was a way to convey sentiment in a piece of email.
B:
Well, there is, right? By the words you use.
A:
Yeah, and that definitely works sometimes. But I wish there were a way to convey humor.
B:
Without a smiley face or LOL?
A:
Yeah, totally. That makes you look like a 12 year old. Sometimes I put "haha" at the end of a sentence I want to be light-hearted, but I am afraid it comes off as sardonic.
B:
Really? Sardonic?
A:
Yeah.
B:
Well, I think the general advice for writers is to convey the sentiment of their characters within the words themselves. You're not supposed to say, "'How interesting', Mary replied drolly." You should just say "'How interesting', Mary said" and the character should understand the tone because of how you setup Mary's character. They would understand that she's being sarcastic or dry or whatever.
A:
Well, yeah, if you're writing a book, sure. I had to write like a four sentence long email today, and I wanted to convey some warmth, punch it up a little. But there's no room to establish context, and the guy doesn't know me well enough to know how to take jokes or anything. So I just stuck "haha" at the end.
B:
It's the same with exclamation points. You're not supposed to use them, but I wrote an email today to a woman at UC Berkley, and it made sense to throw in something like, "I hope you're staying warmer than we are up here in Chicago!" And it's not like it's exciting enough, at all, to use an exclamation mark. But if you use a period
A:
You sound cold!
B:
Yeah, totally. "I hope you're staying warm. Well, enough with the pleasantries, are we having dinner at 6:30 or 7:00?"
A:
I think some people get excited about this. How email is a new form of communication, we're still definining it, etc.
B:
Yeah, I just get kind of annoyed with it.
A:
For real.
B:
Someone should design professional looking smilies.
A:
Instead of the yellow faces?
B:
Yeah, they would be a man or woman in biz-caj, and they would convey more professional sentiments.
A:
I don't think that would catch on.
B:
Unclear!