HAHAHA! Conversation Talk.

As more and more conversations take place through characters on a keyboard, the harder it is to determine the tone of the conversation. The ellipsis may be the largest contributor to tone confusion; I have run into countless numbers of serial offenders. Lol has become nothing more than an acknowledgement of reading a response that may or may not be funny. 

I try to be as straight forward in my conversations in text as I am in verbal conversations. For example, I vary the number of ha's when responding to a funny statement; I also capitalize them if it is deserving. I subconsciously did this for the longest time until my Raybor mentioned it to me. I like to convey emotion using repetition, capitalization, ellipses (plural of ellipsis?), and of course the loved and dreaded emoticons. And if you have ever used SameTime in LotusNotes, (y) and (n) should be your favorite.  

The worst aspect of conversations through text has to be the lack of feedback/acknowledgement. Conversations in person is simple, you can see the other person nodding their head or making eye contact. On the phone, a simple "uh-huh" sound is sufficient. In text, this isn't as natural or simple, for better or for worse.

Since we use email, social networks, instant messaging services, and of course, SMS to communicate so often, it is critical we learn to use characters to communicate more effectively.