Emails: Don't Mince Words!

Email is one of the most powerful communications tools ever invented. With it you can send your thoughts around the world within minutes with the flick of your fingers. And at least one expert says that?s not always a good thing.

Psychology professor Kent Norman studies human interactions for a living, but has hated email from the beginning. Partly, he says, because it?s yet another intrusion - but also because while email is great for sending facts and figures and baby pictures, it is horrible at conveying ideas that are less concrete.

"One of the real problems is that what we intend is not always what?s conveyed to the other person."

Sarcasm, humor... even the gravity of the particular situation can be lost when all you've got is someone else's words on a screen.

"Here's an email - 'Dear John, I've found someone else. The wedding is off.' What this person intended is 'Dear John, I've found another wedding planner. The previous wedding arrangements have been changed.'"

An extreme example perhaps, but certainly a mistake no one would make face to face because we have wonderful ways of using inflection and tone of our voice to convey emotion.

Misunderstanding email is not the only problem. Sometimes you rush in and dash off an email that says exactly what you mean, only later you find out you didn't exactly mean to say it.

"You know ? 'where's my grade!' Exclamation point - that's inappropriate. You would never approach your teacher that way in person."

But in email, says Maryland PhD candidate Kaylen Tucker, it seems anything goes. She's saved a whole cache of emails from her former students that she characterizes as disrespectful.

"'I sent you an email at 12 and I sent you email at 2. Where's my response.' You would never say that in person."

But while Tucker doesn't hate email, she and the professor agree on one thing. Next time you really want to tell someone exactly how you feel perhaps you should pick a slightly less modern form of communication - the telephone.

"You just think a lot more about the words that you say out of your mouth than the words that you type on a screen."