My Online Communication Style

Growing up in the “tech-savvy” society that we live in today, I find it necessary to be updated on online communication styles and lingo. If you’re not up to date you can become lost very easily in all our forms of online communication. I am not completely in love with all of the different forms we now have of communication relating to the internet, so I try not to spend too much time glued to my computer, and I think this is communicate through my use and choice of words when I’m communicating online. That being said I do use the internet in various forms in order to communicate, like Facebook, skype, texting, email etc... Some people love to use letters to express whole words to try to make what they are saying smaller. I think this is somewhat ineffective, because when I get a text or email filled with these abbreviations and symbols I get lost and ultimately don’t know what the person is trying to say. I abbreviate as well, but not to the extent that I make the email or text hard to read. I have noticed that I usually go into detail when I am communicating through the Internet. I do this because I am a pretty thorough person as it is, but I realize that something being read can sometimes be received different than if you were to hear it. This accounts for a lot of misinterpretation and in order to avoid that I spell out the word and use punctuation, so that way the person reading can almost hear it as they are reading it. I have received numerous text messages and emails that I thought were offensive or rude and when I asked the person about it, they say they didn’t have that intention at all. I think my style of online communication reflects me as a person, I am pretty direct with what I say and I try not to beat around the bush. My online communication reflects the way I talk as well as my sense of humor, so people who don’t understand me in person probably won’t understand me online. Different situations call for different styles of communication. For example when I am trying to be fast when I’m typing or texting someone, I will probably say the least amount of words I possibly can in order to get my point across, which is the same for real life situation. If there is a fire in a building you’re not going to explain the fire, your going to yell “fire” and get the hell out of there. If you are late for work and someone messages you on Facebook wanting to talk, your going to say “late for work, bye” and not explain to them or talk about it. These different styles of communication we use verbally and in person have trickled into our online lives. I think this makes it a more effective and realistic way of communicating.