now we know

[calimac]

In an actual scientific study, readers correctly determined whether a piece was intended to be sarcastic or not 84% of the time.

This news comes from Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe (Knopf, 2007), p. 187-88.

This book is largely about appropriateness of tone in e-mail. It discusses, for instance, the difference in tone between

To: Saddam Hussein
From: George W. Bush
Please let in the weapons inspectors.

and

To: Saddam Hussein
From: George W. Bush
Cc: United Nations Secretary General, NATO, European Union, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Please let in the weapons inspectors.

We also have this advice:

A. People read top to bottom.
Q. Why?
A. Bottom posting!
Q. What's the most annoying thing on the Net other than spam?

And there are some real-life examples of really really bad e-mails. I bet other writers have received e-mails like this one sent to a children's book author appealing for the author to write the student's report on the author's book:

I left my book in my locker in school and I was wondering if you can help me out. Can you please send me a brief summary of the book. I would also like to ask you if you could tell me what a good introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution is. ... By the way, I love your books!

I bet you do.

Comments

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Heh. Top-posting has its problems too; on the Gene Wolfe mailing list, the saying is "the Increate cries when you top-post." The preferred style there, as in many other environments, is interleaving your comments with the ever-popular-but-kind-of-annoying left-margin greater-than-signs to indicate layers of quotation.

I actually really like that style, other than the rather ugly layered GT signs. It has a unique conversational feel to it, but one where you can interrupt the other at any point without being rude. I have been trying for a few years to push a word I coined for it: "coinscription."