Improving communication via email and text

Email and text messages have taken communication into a whole new dimension. They are fast, economical and in some instances enable friends to keep in touch far more frequently than the 'pen pal process' ever did. Could such marvellous inventions possibly have any downsides? Well, yes they do.

Punctuation was invented so the sender could visually demonstrate emphasis, tone, inflection etc, in the written word. Commas, exclamation marks, brackets, full stops and all those other small but highly effective symbols help us to fill in the blanks left when we are trying to interpret a written message and body language and verbal emotions are not available to assist us.

Thank goodness for punctuation! Great! Except that when people text or email, grammar and punctuation seem to have gone out of the window which totally changes the meaning of a message.

Here is a well known example of how that can happen.