Evil_Genious: lol, ah, okay then x). You seemed pretty serious, but yeah, after rereading your post it does kinda seem like you were joking XD. Guess we can't win ;)
lol, ah, ok then x). It seemed like you were pretty serious, but after rereading your post it does kinda seem like you were joking XD. Guess we can't win ;)
Letters typed into web forms on the Internet are devoid of inflection, context, emotion, and also cultural and lingual differences. When we say things assuming people will take it one way but do not clearly specify our intention, people are left to speculate, assume what we mean, the tone we're conveying it with, whether it is serious or humour, etc. Emoticons can help to a degree to mitigate the lack of emotional clarity, but even they can be ignored by some who take things literally even if they aren't intended that way. Other times one may purposefully forgo adding an emoticon just to keep people guessing whether they're serious or joking, knowing some people will "get it" and others will see rage, and the writer may enjoy seeing both results as a part of the humour as well. One can never know what one's intents are. :)
But if one wants to be understood clearly including their intents, then they should aim to write clearly and avoid sarcasm, avoid interpretive humour, avoid other things that are up to interpretation and always be as clear and unambiguous as possible. That sometimes means more verbiage (I'm the champion of that! <grin>), but sometimes that's what it takes to be clearly understood.
When we're misunderstood by people regularly, or we have the impression that we are constantly misunderstood then it is probably because we are not communicating clearly and unambiguously with people, and we should focus on that in order to increase understanding and reduce unambiguity. That does indeed sometimes require using more words. Maybe now some folks may understand one of the reasons why I often write lengthier posts to convey a point as well. :)
Back on point though, it's all about Jack Keane 3 - everyone's favourite mythical wishlist item. :)