Denuded E-mail

"... typed words are denuded of the rich emotional context we convey in person or over the phone."

--Daniel Goleman, New York Times, October 7, 2007

One of the things that strike me in our increasingly text rich (as opposed to rich text) environment is the unintended impact writing has on people. One place you see that is in e-mail, says Dan Goleman in his recent New York Times "Preoccupations" column: "E-Mail Is Easy to Write (And to Misread)." The problem, Goleman says, is that writing doesn't employ the "multiple signals the brain uses to calibrate emotions" -- signals that, presumably, the brain also uses to convey and even stimulate emotions. Those signals are the things all animals use to send and receive emotions, as well as stimulate emotion in others -- such as vocal intonation, eye contact, and body language.

Goleman's advice: to more frequently mix in-person contact with e-mail -- giving everyone involved I suppose the opportunity to re-calibrate. At those meetings, I can imagine everyone thinking: "Okay, I see you're really not that cold obnoxious person I thought you were." (Of course, it's also possible that occasionally some of those e-mail impressions are proven dead-on accurate.)

A couple of thoughts: First, why limit this to e-mail -- which is just one kind of text? Aren't all forms of written communication necessarily denuded of emotional context -- such as ad copy, editorials, and blogs? Not to mention novels, essays, Shakespeare sonnets, personal letters and all the other ways people have been writing to get other people excited for thousands of years?

Second thought: Just because it's hard (which admittedly it is, especially when you're in a hurry) that's not to say it can't be done -- or done to great effect. Trust me, a couple of lines in a well-written e-mail can really make someone's day, or ruin it. And that's true for any textual form. And while it's also true that humans can no longer bare their fangs or engage in physical stroking rituals -- we've evolved other tools to get our point across when we really feel the need. And these tools can be amazingly efficient when they have to be.