Comment by hobofan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hobofan | Hacker News Reader

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I think coldness/warmth of the messaging style is much more dependent on emoji use, at least in Slack.

I couldn't imagine writing without at least attempting to use proper grammar. Especially in German where ignoring capitalization makes a difference of night and day.

My reasoning has been similar to the one of the author, but more on a "positivity" than a plain productivity level. If it's easy for others to read my messages and not having to puzzle over them, I hope that it will leave them with overall a more positive association of writing/communicating with me. And that not only goes for professional texting, but writing with friends (or dating) as well. I know it won't always come out perfect, but overall I think it shows some level of respect towards the other person.

I use emojis very sparingly, but I almost always include some sort of positive comment if I've had a long exchange or back and forth with someone, like an "Oh wow, thanks for bringing this to my attention" or an "I also had trouble with this at first" or a "If you need anything else let me know". I try to keep things conversational but still type well, because that's just what I've always done, in work and socially.

Actually something I've been wondering, as somebody learning German right now: are there equivalents to this kind of slang in online German? Would you _ever_ leave a noun, for example, uncapitalized, for a more casual feel?

I wouldn't, and among my friends it's rather rare, but yeah there are people that don't capitalize when texting casually (or in any form of written text like my mom, which drives me insane).

As an English-speaker, communicating with people who neglect capitalisation in messages frustrates me immensely, especially proper nouns.

I've been on the internet 16 hours a day from a young age, and I've never used smilies/emojis/emoticons, except very ironically in some rare cases. I don't think they're necessary, and I find use of "informal IM style" (eliding capitalization and final periods) to be much more telling of tone, personally, especially among young people.

Periods + capitalization (when writing in English) over IM comes across as "cold" to me, whether or not someone's using emoji; unless they're above a certain age, of course.

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