How email can be misleading
Email has many virtues as a method of communicating but it can convey a tone or attitude that is not intended. The New York Times has an interesting article that looks at some of the differences between face-to-face or voice communication and written messages. Here’s an excerpt:
This is becoming more apparent with the emergence of social neuroscience, the study of what happens in the brains of people as they interact. New findings have uncovered a design flaw at the interface where the brain encounters a computer screen: there are no online channels for the multiple signals the brain uses to calibrate emotions.
Face-to-face interaction, by contrast, is information-rich. We interpret what people say to us not only from their tone and facial expressions, but also from their body language and pacing, as well as their synchronization with what we do and say.
Most crucially, the brain’s social circuitry mimics in our neurons what’s happening in the other person’s brain, keeping us on the same wavelength emotionally. This neural dance creates an instant rapport that arises from an enormous number of parallel information processors, all working instantaneously and out of our awareness.
One attempt at conveying nuance in email is the use of “emoticons”, those little figures like 
However, this is a poor substitute for a continuous flow of signals like tone of voice or facial expressions. This means we have to give people some leeway when trying to interpret the implications of their email messages.
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