You don’t type so good
Written by HannahBerry on November 18th, 2008Nothing can truly take the place of a human voice when communicating with another individual. In this day and age, we have so many ways to communicate with those around us but nothing can take the place of face to face or voice to voice communication.
If you’re like me, email is a big part of how I stay in touch with family, friends, even strangers. I go online to keep in touch with friends on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. I communicate via email to sell items on Lejeune Yard Sales and eBay. I get email right on my BlackBerry so it makes it super easy for me to get what I need done, done. The hard part comes when I misunderstand email. You cannot hear a person’s tone of voice through email and therefore it can become difficult to know what the person really wants or needs from me.
Today, like many other days, I received several emails regarding the firewood I am selling on Lejeune Yard Sales. One of the buyers was very nice and ended up coming to my house within a few hours to purchase a truckload of wood. Two other email inquiries I received disturbed me.
My ad says, “Do you need good quality firewood? You found it. For just $60 per truck load, you can heat your home this winter. We have plenty. Hardwood, not pine. We are located off *leftblank* Rd. For an extra $20, we can deliver to your home.”
The emails I received said this, “is it cut and can i have #”
That’s it.
No punctuation…heck, it’s not even a complete sentence.
So I tell the person, “I have a load of unsplit wood that is in managable size logs for $60.
I also have a load of split wood for $120.
Which would you like??”
And she says, “unsplit number and address”
Strike two.
Her inability to form a complete sentence doesn’t make me want to readily give my phone number and home address to her. Come on, would you give your address to a person who typed, much less TALKED like that? I didn’t think so. I think even if I did give her my information, she probably wouldn’t have shown up to purchase the wood anyway!
People are crazy! There ought to be a class on how to communicate online. I know there are plenty of pages explaining the basics of online etiquette, like how THIS IS SCREAMING and that yoU sHouLd neVeR, unDer AnY cIrcuMstAncES tyPe LiKe ThIs beCauSe it MAkes yOU sEeM lIkE a 12 YeAr oLd. The problem is, no one reads those pages. And even if they did, they don’t type like it. I guess poor online communication skills are just a pet peeve of mine. If you can’t speak well online, you probably can’t speak well in real life and I don’t care for that.
Just my two cents.

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