Communicate Effictively in Online Forums and Chat Rooms

Logging in to my favorite forum for telecommuters one morning, I was reminded quickly of how ugly online communication can become. A cat fight ensued and resulted in one poster comparing another to the German Nazis.

While the guilty party might have meant for the statement to be an obvious exaggeration, joke, or figure of speech, in the world of cyber communication, one can often and easily be misconstrued. After all, everyone on the forum is human too.

We all make word slips, and make mistakes. I'm the queen of typos and often leave out important words and phrases, but some mistakes are more hurtful than others.

What if a Holocaust survivor or descendant frequented our online community. They would think extremely poorly of our little community.

I was a staff writer for a newspaper where I saw first hand the power of the written word. Rather than writing for the Washington Post, blogging, or e-mailing a friend, certain subjects are taboo. A big lesson is that online communication has special considerations.

Without facial expressions, verbal tone, and body language, sarcasm and exaggerations are lost to most readers in a forum or chat room. Instead the sarcastic phrase comes off sounding rude or even mean.

While my writing style is more relaxed in forum and chat rooms settings, I still follow several self-imposed rules:

I always reread my post for grammar and wording mistakes that could confuse another reader.

When reading over, I try to ask if anything is ambiquous or confusing.

I leave out sarcasm.