Email voice
One of the dumbest comments I keep coming across, living this tech connected life, is: “email can’t convey tone of voice”.
“Sorry – I wasn’t being rude. It’s just the way email made it sound”
Bollocks.
It’s like saying that the skill of writing has somehow become a lost art in this age of 10-second spot commercials and 22 minute TV shows.
Yes, I know it’s not always easy to fully convey your desired tone when snapping off a one line response to a snarky message. Hence the evolution of “emoticons” out of the Internet soup – those dinky little sideways smileys often used in an effort to throw some extra emotion into the dry text. (Check out the link, btw - Dave Barry gets some neat kicks into the 'nads of cheesy "netiquette").
But I don't think writing is a lost art. I really, really don't think it is. In fact, I believe that almost the opposite is true.
It's not that the skill of writing has died, it's that email and the 'Net have made writers of us all – skilled or unskilled as we may be.
There are way more people today engaged in the occupation of writing, as profession or incidental necessity, than ever before. Trouble is: not all of us are any good at it.
When the world worked around quill pens and parchment, I’m sure there were proportionally just as many crappy writers. We may perceive education standards to have fallen since back then (I won’t dispute this one: in many ways they have – or at least they’ve changed). But the big thing, of course, is that the availability of formal education has increased exponentially at the same time – so the catchment area of people able to, needing to and/or having to write has extended dramatically. It balances out.
Still - has the “art of writing” really declined?
Tom Wolfe writes just as well as Dickens. Different – but both great wordsmiths (to my tastes, anyway). Martin Amis is not the same writer as his Dad, but he’s still pretty nifty with a metaphor.
Stuart McLean, Iain Banks, Nicholson Baker, India Knight - all big email users, all great writers.
And writing for electronic media is still writing - it still has the ability to illuminate the soul, invigorate the mind, wrench the imagination, stimulate the sumfingorudder.
Chris Locke’s EGR fits this category, or some of the stuff on Salon, or even the contributions to some fan fiction sites and, yes, even quite a few blogs I've come across.
When my daughter was born, I had three people tell me that the announcement email I sent out brought them to tears. It was 8 lines long. It fit within the attention span of the “Fastr” blipvert culture - but still, I guess, it must have been reasonably good writing.
I’ve had emails from friends that caused me to blow hot coffee out my nose.
I’ve had emails (many, many emails) that have made my blood boil.
I’ve had emails that made me want to reach through the screen and hug the sender.
And every day I get at least one email that starts my mind racing off down uncharted avenues of thought.
I know email does convey tone of voice. I know some of those emails that cook the corpuscles actually are just bloody rude. And I know that some are just crappily written, by people who don’t hear their own tone of voice in their heads as their thoughts travel through their fingertips and into the bitstream pointed at my inbox.
Everyone is a writer nowadays. Not everyone can write.
Or, to put it another way:
People can still write. Just not every people.
“Sorry – I wasn’t being rude. It’s just the way email made it sound”
Bollocks.
It’s like saying that the skill of writing has somehow become a lost art in this age of 10-second spot commercials and 22 minute TV shows.
Yes, I know it’s not always easy to fully convey your desired tone when snapping off a one line response to a snarky message. Hence the evolution of “emoticons” out of the Internet soup – those dinky little sideways smileys often used in an effort to throw some extra emotion into the dry text. (Check out the link, btw - Dave Barry gets some neat kicks into the 'nads of cheesy "netiquette").
But I don't think writing is a lost art. I really, really don't think it is. In fact, I believe that almost the opposite is true.
It's not that the skill of writing has died, it's that email and the 'Net have made writers of us all – skilled or unskilled as we may be.
There are way more people today engaged in the occupation of writing, as profession or incidental necessity, than ever before. Trouble is: not all of us are any good at it.
When the world worked around quill pens and parchment, I’m sure there were proportionally just as many crappy writers. We may perceive education standards to have fallen since back then (I won’t dispute this one: in many ways they have – or at least they’ve changed). But the big thing, of course, is that the availability of formal education has increased exponentially at the same time – so the catchment area of people able to, needing to and/or having to write has extended dramatically. It balances out.
Still - has the “art of writing” really declined?
Tom Wolfe writes just as well as Dickens. Different – but both great wordsmiths (to my tastes, anyway). Martin Amis is not the same writer as his Dad, but he’s still pretty nifty with a metaphor.
Stuart McLean, Iain Banks, Nicholson Baker, India Knight - all big email users, all great writers.
And writing for electronic media is still writing - it still has the ability to illuminate the soul, invigorate the mind, wrench the imagination, stimulate the sumfingorudder.
Chris Locke’s EGR fits this category, or some of the stuff on Salon, or even the contributions to some fan fiction sites and, yes, even quite a few blogs I've come across.
When my daughter was born, I had three people tell me that the announcement email I sent out brought them to tears. It was 8 lines long. It fit within the attention span of the “Fastr” blipvert culture - but still, I guess, it must have been reasonably good writing.
I’ve had emails from friends that caused me to blow hot coffee out my nose.
I’ve had emails (many, many emails) that have made my blood boil.
I’ve had emails that made me want to reach through the screen and hug the sender.
And every day I get at least one email that starts my mind racing off down uncharted avenues of thought.
I know email does convey tone of voice. I know some of those emails that cook the corpuscles actually are just bloody rude. And I know that some are just crappily written, by people who don’t hear their own tone of voice in their heads as their thoughts travel through their fingertips and into the bitstream pointed at my inbox.
Everyone is a writer nowadays. Not everyone can write.
Or, to put it another way:
People can still write. Just not every people.
