Aug 13, 2010 (The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Emily Goss holed up in her Downtown office recently, while her boyfriend spent a beautiful summer afternoon boating."You're so mean," she texted. He didn't get her sarcasm."He thought I was actually mad," said Goss, a business development manager at Pittsburgh Technology Council who relies heavily on e-mail to conduct business. "On the phone, you can make a joke, and your personality comes through, but with e-mail, it's cut and dried." Nonspoken communication such as e-mail and text messaging has become a daily staple, particularly in the business world, and it's projected to become even more prevalent.
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Yet, with more than 200 billion e-mails sent each day, according to some market firms' estimates, there is plenty of room for interpretation -- or misinterpretation.Lymbix, a New Brunswick, Canada-based company that specializes in tools for understanding text-based communication, recently launched an application that flags emotionally charged speech in e-mail.ToneCheck is similar to spell check or grammar check, except it scans the tone of e-mails for words that trigger emotions, from amusement to humiliation. Users can set their tone tolerance, and the program will send an alert if the e-mail is outside a user's preset limits.A beta version is available free for Microsoft Outlook users. ToneCheck also is in the works for other e-mail providers."Doing this kind of tone-checking might be a good first defense," said Dennis Galletta, a professor of business administration at Pitt's Katz School of Business who teaches a course on human-computer interaction. "(An) assistant might be better for big, important messages." A 2005 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found e-mail messages that included sarcasm were misinterpreted half the time. Yet, the e-mail sender and receiver each thought they deciphered the message correctly, the study found.Even emoticons can be misconstrued, said Justin Kruger, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business and co-author of the study."We hear that tone because we're typing it," he said. But a receiver doesn't always hear the same thing.Still, e-mail remains a productive way to conduct business, said Sara Radicati, president and CEO of the Radicati Group, a Palo Alto, Calif.,-based market research firm that specializes in the computer and telecommunications industry.The firm estimates 2.9 billion e-mail accounts exist worldwide, and it predicts that will grow by 24 percent to 3.6 billion by 2014.Of those, 730 million are corporate accounts. The typical corporate e-mail user sends and receives about 110 messages each day, according to the company. The firm expects that also to continue to increase.Galletta said using sarcasm in e-mail can be dangerous."Saying declarative things and asking simple questions are the safest ways to go," he said.To see more of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/. Copyright (c) 2010, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail services@mctinfoservices.com, or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States, call +1 312-222-4544).
Referance:http://education.tmcnet.com/news/2010/08/13/4956264.htm
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