CRAIG CROSSMAN Fuzzmail offers unique way to clarify and amuse

Ever since humankind began writing, the possibility of being misunderstood has existed. This occurs primarily because when something is written, two basic elements of communication are being omitted. These two elements are facial expressions and tonal inflection. When two people communicate with each other while standing face to face, their facial expressions typically convey a myriad of direct as well as subtle additions to what is being verbally spoken at any given moment. Take emotions for example. You can speak the same words, but if they’re spoken with a frown as opposed to a smile, those same words such as “Have a nice day” can mean something completely different.

Tonal inflection can also produce the same results. Saying “Have a nice day” with a sarcastic tonality really means you don’t want them to have one. But when you write “Have a nice day,” the recipient can know only it’s true meaning if the previous or subsequent sentences somehow convey your state of mind when you wrote it. If not, who knows how you truly meant what you wrote? Perhaps the circumstances before you received the written communication may help you in identifying what was really meant. In any case, over the years, additional stylizations were added to help writers deliver a more accurate deliverance.

Examples

Handwritten documents could be underlined, pressing down harder on the pen or pencil would make things darker to help convey the mood. Punctuation also helped. A healthy number of exclamation points added would make a reader sit up and take notice. Then the typewritten document appeared on the scene. But words could still be all capitalized, underscored, even double underscored, boldfaced and you could still use those extra punctuation marks to help.

Then computers arrived, and with them came e-mail, instant messaging and more. To that generation of writing we added emoticons. These first were just clever horizontal arrangements of punctuation marks to make little smiling faces, like :), but people got tired of twisting their heads sideways. So we got really tiny character-sized graphics of smiling and frowning faces with tongues sticking out to further help us more accurately convey what we were trying to type. And while these continue to help us to deliver more accurate documents today, one Web site has added something new and clever in our ongoing efforts to make sure that what we write is more accurately understood. It’s called Fuzzmail (www.fuzzmail.org).

Reflect for a moment on how you compose an e-mail to someone. You may type something only to realize that what you just typed really doesn’t accurately communicate what you’re trying to say. So you backspace to delete that word and type in something you believe to be better. Or maybe you backspaced it out because you changed your mind and thought the word might be a tad too strong to use. So you pick something somewhat milder. But usually it’s your first thought that most accurately communicates what you were thinking at that moment. But maybe you were just too chicken to leave it there, or you decided that if you wrote it that person would either fire you or divorce you, or worse, do both. But in fact, if you think about it, the actual process of typing that e-mail you just sent might have truly conveyed to the recipient a better understanding of your state of mind. But if they could somehow see that you backspaced out the word “jerk” and replaced it with “sir,” wouldn’t that let the reader see the true inner conflict within you and see how you really felt? Well, that’s what Fuzzmail does.

How it works

Fuzzmail records the entire process of composing the finished e-mail you finally deliver and lets the recipient see that entire process. In fact, they will see the timing of that process as well. And as everyone knows, timing is everything. So when they see you backspace over “blithering idiot” and replace it with “What were you thinking” along with how long it actually took you to backspace over those words, that alone will truly convey volumes to that person that would otherwise be missed in an ordinary e-mail.

So whether it’s an e-mail love letter, a note to a business colleague or whatever (there are numerous examples of this at the Fuzzmail Web site), you’re going to discover a whole new level of written communication accuracy that could never have been achieved by writers of yore. Rejoice in the discovery of this addition to your arsenal of writing tools. Now go out there and really write what you mean. And have a nice day!

XCraig Crossman is a national newspaper columnist writing about computers and technology. For more information, visit his Web site at www.computeramerica.com.

© 2007 McClatchy Tribune