Personalizing

E-Mail

Messages

In a telephone or face-to-face conversation, you read the other person's tone of voice or body language to get clues about how they feel. These emotional cues are absent from e-mail. Humor, especially sarcasm, is especially difficult to pick up in an e-mail message.

To help fill in the gaps, some symbols and acronyms have come into use.

Electronic Body Language

There are many ways to personalize your e-mail messages.You can use smileys, also known as emoticons, which are expressions you create from the characters on your keyboard. A few popular ones include:

Emoticon

Meaning

:-)

Happy

 

 

:-(

Sad

 

 

:-o

Surprised

 

 

:-@

Screaming

 

 

:-I

Indifferent

 

 

:-e

Disappointed

 

 

:-<

Mad

 

 

:-D

Laughing

 

 

;-)

Winking

To keep messages short, there are some abbreviations you can use:

Abbreviations

Meaning

<BTW>

By the way

 

 

<G>

Grinning

 

 

<IMHO>

In my humble opinion

 

 

<ROTFL>

Rolling on the floor laughing

 

 

<LOL>

Laughing out loud

5-10 E-MAIL

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