The wonderful (and yet not so wonderful) thing about the internet is being anonymous. You can act any way you want and if you are clever about it, no one will know who you are. You can go into chat rooms and tell people you are any age, sex, and height, and you won’t get caught, (well some of the time).
So there really isn’t much one can do to stop people from lying about their weight, height, age, and where they are from or what they do for a living. And perhaps you are one of those people. But besides the lying that takes place online (of course people in real life lie too) there are ways to type nice.
End it with a Smile:
There are lots of different facial expressions one can use with typing. There are smiley faces, sad faces, angry faces, confused faces, and more. In many cases, it is really hard to show your true personality just by typing. You may be he nicest person in the world, but your text comes out mean and sarcastic. One way to help is to add some text smiles.
There’s nothing sweeter than someone saying, “I hope you are having a great day,” with that smile at the end.
Do Not Spam – Ever
Spamming consists of either typing a lot of text (also known as a wall of text) before the other person gets to respond, or typing a lot of typed out garbage like “efaoifjaoi” over and over.
Overwhelming someone with text, and not giving them a chance to talk can be a really big turn off. If your friend has asked you to tell a story, that perhaps is a different situation. But logging in and completely walling their screen with your text can frustrate, anger or turn away people.
It also can give people the impression that you are angry at them or disrespect them if you give them a lot of garbled type of just random letters.
Do Not Nudge or Buzz!
For those of you unfamiliar with this, these are some buttons on MSN and Yahoo! Messenger that allow you to hit that forced their window to shake, make a sound, and many times force that chat box in front of their screen.
I do not know why either of these messengers or others alike have these features. I really find it to be extremely rude to be able to force your conversation in front of someone’s screen. These features can be blocked, but I only would see these to be necessary under emergencies.
My personal experience with these features has been bad. I have been working on things on my computer when random people I did not know started talking to me on Yahoo! Messenger and began to buzz me, forcing their screen in front of my work. It was very frustrating to the point of putting them on ignore.
I have also had people begin to try to call my computer from the same messenger. It was very frustrating, and afterwards I made it so that they could never talk to me again.
People get really aggravated fast if they are being nudged.
Do not expect a fast response – Do not make people wait too long
If you are having a conversation with someone online, it is rude to expect them to answer you in 30 seconds or else. Getting upset because someone didn’t answer you right that very second, can also make it so that people do not talk to you anymore.
Even if you seem like you are being courteous by going, “Are you still there?” It can really bug someone if it’s only been less than a minute and they are all ready getting harassed to respond.
On the flip side, do not take 30 minutes to answer someone. That too can be rude. If you are going to leave your keyboard for more than around 10 minutes, it is good to let the person know so that they don’t feel like they are being ignored.
A good back and forth response time I have found to be around 3-4 minutes. It’s not like I really timed it, but I have noticed over the years of typing back and forth based on what the “last message received” said.
A lot of it depends on what kind of a conversation you are having. If you are having a very casual on and off conversation with like your sister, a longer wait time might be okay. But if your friend is upset one night and needs a friend to talk to, waiting 15 minutes between responses can be rude to them because of the context of the conversation.
Exclamation Points – And the Over-usage of them
There is the period, question mark, and exclamation point. In a general rule of writing in general, exclamation points should be used at minimum. Reason for this being is if you always have an exclamation point at the end of your sentences, where does it leave room for emphasis?
The other thing is that if you always have an exclamation point at the end, it sounds like you can be either screaming or overly hyper. And as common practice, don’t use more than a few exclamation points at a time if you’re talking to someone online either through e-mail, chat room, or messenger.
It really looks bad when you do something like:
“Are you there?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Caps Lock
Don’t have your finger stuck on the Shift button or always have your Caps Lock button on. No one likes to read text with all caps. Not only is it difficult to read at times, but also sounds like you’re screaming at someone.
If you follow these online etiquette rules, your online conversations will improve. It is very hard to always show your true personality thought text. You may be the nicest person ever, but come across as a jerk online. Put a smiley face at the end of your sentences if you are unsure how you’re coming across.
You can meet a lot of people online if you type nice. If you don’t type nice, it could even cause conflict with your real life friends if you are being rude to them online. Take these tips into consideration if you are really unsure about how to type nice. : – )
