Emoticons and email ettiquette

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How would you construct your email's content? How would you understand what are your friend or your boss is trying to tell you in a long email? Are there any miscommunication or misinterpretation in between?

From the transcript from ABC news is discussing about the creation of emoticons, the use of different emoticons to express different meaning which are created by Scott Fahlman. There is also a discussion about the ethic of sending email to certain people, younger ones and elderly.

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The way you interpret yourself in direct communication or words form in a sentence can create different meaning. According to Walsh, (2006,p25) levels of decoding meaning is depending on the type of text and it can be enhanced by the reader's background's knowledge of the world and how language works. For example, I sent an email to a friend to show my unhappiness by typing in Capital letters for every sentence (e.g WHY!) and the receiver understood that I was clearly unhappy. The two of us are clearly have the knowledge on how language works and how it form certain meanings.

Moreover, putting emoticon is a better option to have a clear meaning. The receiver clearly understand when he or she read the email and there is a smile emoticon. It shows that the sender is happy. As what Kress & Leuween (1997) explained that image and words are supporting each other.

We have to constantly remember that email has its own etiquette, there are Do's and Don'ts.

It is depending who are we talking to, writing an email to a boss we have to monitor our formality. Try to avoid the prevailing assumption that e-mail by it's very nature allows you to be informal in your business e-mail (2010).

In conclusion, I believe people needs to have the knowledge of understanding the manner of writing an email and the usage of an emoticons. The understanding is depending on how much we can understand how language works.

References

Business Email Etiquette Basic,2010, ' The business E-mail Etiquette Basics you need to know', Reviewed on 14th June 2010:

http://www.businessemailetiquette.com/business-e-mail-etiquette-basics/

Kress,G.& van Leeuwen,T (2006), ' Reading images. Chapter 1: The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication,pp16-44

Walsh, (2006), ' The 'textual shift': Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts' vol 29, pp 12-37