both good and bad effects. A good one is that it encourages honesty
and tends to break down hierarchical authority relationships; a bad
one is that it may encourage depersonalization and gratuitous
rudeness. Perhaps in response to this, experienced netters often
display a sort of conscious formal politesse in their writing that has
passed out of fashion in other spoken and written media (for example,
the phrase "Well said, sir!" is not uncommon).

Many introverted hackers who are next to inarticulate in person
communicate with considerable fluency over the net, perhaps precisely
because they can forget on an unconscious level that they are dealing
with people and thus don't feel stressed and anxious as they would
face to face.

Though it is considered gauche to publicly criticize posters for poor
spelling or grammar, the network places a premium on literacy and
clarity of expression. It may well be that future historians of
literature will see in it a revival of the great tradition of personal
letters as art.
_________________________________________________________________

Node:Email Quotes, Next:[129]Hacker Speech Style, Previous:[130]Hacker
Writing Style, Up:[131]Top

Email Quotes and Inclusion Conventions

One area where conventions for on-line writing are still in some flux
is the marking of included material from earlier messages -- what
would be called `block quotations' in ordinary English. From the usual
typographic convention employed for these (smaller font at an extra