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Comment by jacobr | Hacker News Reader

I have started to use emojis almost excessively in situations where there is risk of misinterpretation due to my terseness. It comes across a bit unprofessional, but I prefer that over being considered rude or lacking empathy. I believe the latter impression is harder to recover from.

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I do the same thing. I wouldn't do it in early interactions with someone or with customers, but with colleagues and friends in conversations I often think that terse factual statements can be mis-interpreted, and I'd rather be thought of as unprofessional/frivilous rather than rude.

Also re-reading e-mails whilst mentally putting myself in the shoes of the recipient to see if I think it could be mis-intepreted helps avoid potential issues, I find.

Its a wise thing to do. I use it to simulate, how I would do in a face to face communication. So a smiley, where you would actually smile, to soften the blow, or to add humility when pointing somebody's wrong could be useful. Of course its use has to be limited, else it will look like a typical WhatsApp message emoticon train. :)

There are lots of small things, which if more people do, would lead to friendlier communications. E.g. replying with a greeting, to a mail which has greeting.

So your basically adding a laugh track to an email? I think japanese/korean tv do something similar, where they show people's faces in a corner reacting to whatever is on screen so the audience is encouraged towards a certain reaction.

Careful with that, you might just add more confusion! https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-m...

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