At work we have seen this also.  It is very easy for emotions to 
escalate using email as the only communications method.

Michael

On Dec 21, 2004, at 12:37 PM, Stéphane Rollandin wrote:

> Michael Latta wrote:
>> Stef,
>> I think it is less your english than email.  Email is very bad at 
>> communicating inflections.  The inflections on what get said make a 
>> huge difference in communicating the subtile meaning of works, and 
>> are critical to irony, teasing, and other forms of modifying the 
>> intent of words.  Keep up the good work, but leave the inflections to 
>> times when you can get them across.
>
> yes, I will definitely follow your advice :)
>
> still I'm a bit surprised at how fast things can blow up. I would 
> expect that in a friendly list populated with intelligent people an 
> ambigous piece of writing would be given the benefit of doubt, but 
> unfortunately this is not always the case. this is sad...
>
> ok it's over now. thanks for your kind words (well maybe they were not 
> kind, hopefully I got the inflections right :).
>
>
> regards,
>
> Stef
>