Yeah, those misplaced modifiers are still nagging at me – and so is the glaring typo I didn’t see until after it went out in my headline. However, the words on my mind at moment are those “lonely written words” we see on a computer screen when communicating electronically – words that both common sense and research dictate are easily misinterpreted.
Until shortly before I met Sop, the idea of socializing electronically had never crossed my mind. Although I did sleep with my laptop much of the year following Katrina, that’s hardly the sort of socializing that’s become so common to email, blogs, and social networking sites.
Unfortunately, my relationship with that laptop had an unhappy ending. There is no help for a laptop that falls off a bed, particularly one landing port side with a jump drive installed; however, for the more usual ways of socializing electronically, there is the option of “netiquette training” :
E-mail is not meant to replace all human contact. E-mail is not meant to be your sole venue of communication… Use e-mail for the day to day stuff, but use your phone when the topic or situation requires for those whose relationships are of importance to you…That’s what real “friends” do!
My “relationship” with that laptop was an important one but we certainly weren’t “friends”. However, while e-mail is not the only way I communicate with my employees, it is the way I manage the day to day operation of a business with over half the staff working at a distance from the main office.
Consequently, I didn’t need netiquette training or research to tell me the pitfalls of e-mail communication or have to rely on the gifted Learned Hand to know words are “chameleons” that “reflect the color of their environment”. Continue reading ““on line” was the place mama hung wet laundry – how’s your “Netiquette” airing?”