Communicating online presents unique opportunities and obstacles. When people communicate face to face, they have the opportunity for immediate feedback. For example, if I said, “The movie, Leatherheads was good,” you could reply: “In what way was it good?” Because of the opportunity to clarify our meaning through follow-up questions, many of us have become accustomed to not striving for clarity in our casual conversations. A typical conversation might go something like this:
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Mr. Jones: “I had a bad day today.”
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Ms. Smith: “What happened?”
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Mr. Jones: “We missed a deadline.”
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Ms. Smith: “Why.”
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Mr. Jones: “Jimmy was just off.”
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Ms. Smith: “Do you mean off work, or he was not very productive?”
>>Then there’s the abbreviated, text-message carry over to blogs. I remember years ago when I received a message with “lol” included. I wondered why my student was responding with “lots of love.” Fortunately before responding I discovered “lol” stood for “laugh out loud.”
Ha, we are so from the same school!