Looking Past the Bad Email
- Monday, April 18 2011 @ 08:12 am
- Contributed by: Jet
- Views: 1,708
The world of online dating is attractive option to many, for a myriad of reasons. Maybe someone lives in a small town and wants to broaden their options. Maybe they have very specific interests and they’d like to find someone else to has them, too. Maybe they’re of a sexual orientation that isn’t easy to come by in their area. Or maybe they feel they can best express themselves through the written word, instead of meeting people through chance, causal contact.
The problem is, it’s not always easy to tell who is comfortable with the written word and who isn’t. Presumably profiles have been carefully edited, so they’re usually free from major error. For many, it’s not until the first email exchange that we begin to get a “real” sense of their writing skill. And sometimes, the results can be shocking.
If a profile is a carefully polished first impression, the equivalent of a glamorous date, then an email exchange can be more akin to knocking on someone’s door at 7am, when they’re in their bathrobe and slippers. Typos get by. Smilies abound. To someone who crafts an email like a novel, flagrant misuse of acronyms can actually be a distraction to the point of obscuring the personality of the email’s author.
If you’re the sort of person who would actually be offended by too many exclamation points, simply remember: not everyone excels at the written letter. And in fact, when you’re in a relationship, even one that started online, emails tend to go the way of the dinosaur. Are you going to let a few words in all capital letters be a barrier to a potential relationship, or will it someday become a little quirk that you chuckle and sigh about?
However, if you’re not Hemingway sitting at a typewriter, that’s no excuse to get sloppy when sending emails, particularly first-contact emails. For many, the majority of their emailing is informal, to friends and family. While you may someday be on intimate terms with a potential match, you aren’t yet; run a spellchecker, at the very least, and keep acronyms and smilies to a bare minimum.
It can be quite possible for a wordsmith and an exclamation abuser to find love through an online dating website; the key here is to remember that the profiles, the emails, are just tools to facilitate an in-person meeting. It’s in person, not in text, that the real sparks fly.
The problem is, it’s not always easy to tell who is comfortable with the written word and who isn’t. Presumably profiles have been carefully edited, so they’re usually free from major error. For many, it’s not until the first email exchange that we begin to get a “real” sense of their writing skill. And sometimes, the results can be shocking.
If a profile is a carefully polished first impression, the equivalent of a glamorous date, then an email exchange can be more akin to knocking on someone’s door at 7am, when they’re in their bathrobe and slippers. Typos get by. Smilies abound. To someone who crafts an email like a novel, flagrant misuse of acronyms can actually be a distraction to the point of obscuring the personality of the email’s author.
If you’re the sort of person who would actually be offended by too many exclamation points, simply remember: not everyone excels at the written letter. And in fact, when you’re in a relationship, even one that started online, emails tend to go the way of the dinosaur. Are you going to let a few words in all capital letters be a barrier to a potential relationship, or will it someday become a little quirk that you chuckle and sigh about?
However, if you’re not Hemingway sitting at a typewriter, that’s no excuse to get sloppy when sending emails, particularly first-contact emails. For many, the majority of their emailing is informal, to friends and family. While you may someday be on intimate terms with a potential match, you aren’t yet; run a spellchecker, at the very least, and keep acronyms and smilies to a bare minimum.
It can be quite possible for a wordsmith and an exclamation abuser to find love through an online dating website; the key here is to remember that the profiles, the emails, are just tools to facilitate an in-person meeting. It’s in person, not in text, that the real sparks fly.
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