Matt Whiting wrote:

I've been using usenet for 10+ years and have found that people tend to
come across as more hostile in writing than they really are in person.
This happens in email as well.Â*Â*YouÂ*don'tÂ*haveÂ*theÂ*inflectionÂ*andÂ*o ther
nonverbal cues that you get in mano-y-mano conversation and it is easy
for things to escalate well beyond what anyone intended.

I've been USENETing since at least 84 (according to DejaGoogle), and I
agree. For a while, I resisted using those "emotocon" glyphs reasoning
that words should be sufficient in a written medium.

Eventually, I gave that up. Too many read perhaps every other, or every
third, word. Any possible subtlety is lost when reading is so sparse.
Spoonfeeding is required.

- Andrew