How can you judge the ‘tone’ of an email?

A very interesting article on how easy it is to misinterpret the 'tone' of emails, causing unecessary flame-wars, family fallings-out, and even litigation.

Apparently most people _estimate_ that they 'get it right' around 80 percent of the time, that is, that they know what 'tone' an email is meant to convey four times out of five.

However, in an admittedly smallish study (**) , people were getting it right (that is, guessing the same 'tone' as that in the stated intention of the writer) about 50 percent of the time – no better than chance really!

Could explain a few things…

I use smiley's a _lot_ in my emails – I wonder if this makes it better or worse. Some people could interpret 🙂 to be a sarcastic sort of a grin I spose. Hmmmmm.

(**) N. Epley, J. Kruger, http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,

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