Gucci Little Piggy

Kicking. Squealing.

Why women email and text the way they do

The truest thing I’ve read today:

A male friend with a new job in a mostly female workplace confessed a problem: “My co-workers think I’m rude in e-mails. They say I’m short with them.” He then showed me a one-word e-mail: “Thanks.” He was literally being short with them. “Add vowels,” I instructed, drawing from a vast knowledge of girls-night-out e-mail chains. Thaaanks! The extra letters acknowledge that, though his message may only require six letters, his care is worth at least eight. And short utterances can look lonely on a big, blank screen; extra letters fill the void and sound friendlier in your head.

Female “word elongation” is the topic of an Atlantic article and an academic study this week. “When people talk, they use intonation in a number of varied and subtle ways,” a linguist told the Atlantic‘s Jen Doll. “There’s a lot of emotional nuance that can be conveyed that you can’t do in writing.” Accordingly, I have identified five types of keystroke repetition, each of which contains countless nuanced variations.

This also tracks men’s tendency to be less emotive in face-to-face interactions and other settings.  Men’s voices are more stable, and they use fewer verbal intonations and facial expressions.

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20 Responses to Why women email and text the way they do

  1. Sixpan 02/21/2013 at 5:56 pm

    Chicks get melty if you write like people talk. Mimicking female vocal patterns is an essential component of text game and bait posts on social media, since it effectively allows one to pack more “meaning” into a brief communique. Heartiste should address these findings in his text game compendium.

  2. Suburban_elk 02/21/2013 at 6:42 pm

    How can there be a whole article about that.

    The chix like the texting drama. Ok, next article.

  3. Suburban_elk 02/21/2013 at 6:58 pm

    Perhaps that is not what the article says.

    Anywaze – they be scribbin from here

  4. OhioStater 02/21/2013 at 7:05 pm

    It’s also a giant shit test. A guy that texts like a girl has a lot of female friends or is secretly gay.

  5. Suburban_elk 02/21/2013 at 7:10 pm

    Meaning is contained in properly spelled words, with standard abbreviations allowed.

    However. Game, as the concept has come to mean, is what works. And what works has come to include feminine mannerisms. Effed up, but there it is.

    But that role reversal non sense will work only for guys who know no better.

  6. Suburban_elk 02/21/2013 at 7:29 pm

    And what works has come to include feminine mannerisms.

    Whether or not feminine mannerisms are part of what is called game, can lead to questions and whatnot.

    From observation – i see young men, feminine guys with sensitive taste and perceptive intelligence and outward personalities, with beautiful girls. These guys, love em or hate em, are become the default partners for the west side girl.

    So these guys’ habits are quite in opposition to the manly frames encouraged in the gamosphere.

    A big man overwhelms the little boyz, but – acknowledge the success these guyz have.

  7. Reym 02/21/2013 at 7:35 pm

    This sounds like typical chick-advice which is to say, chicks don’t understand their own psychology and give advice that is contrary to success (see: “Nice Guys”). Any guy who writes like this will look like a tool and a highly unprofessional one to boot.

  8. well 02/21/2013 at 8:54 pm

    Remember folks, when you use only the appropriate number of vowels in your emails, you are contributing to the hostile cis-antiwomyn-anti(pick any combiation of the following: L, G, B, T)-heteronormative culture of oppression that keeps women from attaining their full potential in the workplace.

  9. driveallnight 02/21/2013 at 10:25 pm

    Uh-oh. His female coworkers are unhaaapy with him.

  10. Steven Penny 02/21/2013 at 11:23 pm

    This is fucking stupid.

  11. S_McCoy 02/22/2013 at 12:14 am

    Just use an exclamation mark, Thanks!, if they still bitch about it just ignore them. Honestly, do women bring any real value to the workplace?

  12. Tarl 02/22/2013 at 5:10 am

    Tell him to change nothing. Short emails emphasize his higher status. (Also tell him to take a long time to reply.) This is all the more important if his coworkers are female.

  13. S_McCoy 02/22/2013 at 6:47 am

    This is true, I’ve taken to allotting email response to specific blocks of time in the morning and afternoon and that’s it and the ticked off followups I get within 15 minutes of the first are all from women. Men treat others with respect, women are incapable of doing that unless they want to have sex with him

  14. Lara 02/22/2013 at 7:34 am

    I write like that. I think women don’t mind it from a man, but find it rude when another woman does it.

  15. X-tree 02/22/2013 at 7:44 am

    Lara said…

    “I write like that.”

    ————-

    How low is your 2d:4d digit ratio?

  16. Lara 02/22/2013 at 7:49 am

    Low. My ring finger is clearly longer than my index finger on both my hands. It’s hard for me to girl-up my emails, but I do try and soften them a little if I’m writing to another woman.

  17. Suburban_elk 02/22/2013 at 8:17 am

    some parody of that texting style would be funny and appropriate here but no and rather in stead

    i grow old, rolled
    the snow is cold in the morning
    the dog sleeps

    waiting for spring

  18. Suburban_elk 02/22/2013 at 8:39 am

    So. In a bar the other day – ok, local colour, it was Ruby Tuesday at the Mall – and you know their decor is so, like, implicitly white – Ah! the secret of success! – so bonhomie. Yeah it is thought up from corporate central but that is their theme. On the walls is this stuff from the earlier half of the the last century, old sleighs with metal runners and wood boards, and bowling pins that were made with woodworking tools, and historical pictures of people, of men pretty much exclusively, come to think of it.

    Which is the point, these pictures of these nineteenth century men. (Obligatory post prefatory disclaimer: no homo.) But these guys, this picture of this football team from the 40s, the leather helmets, all white players, every one of them, all forty or fifty, with faces from a cartoon book – jawbone faces bursting with gleeful pugnacity.

    It was a real contrast to the people at the mall. Those people do not seem to be around anymore, these parts.

  19. TD 02/22/2013 at 10:47 am

    There’s nothing wrong with occasionally elongating words for effect, but people need to learn how to put the emphasis in the right spot. So many people will type something like Whattttttt?! when they mean Whaaaaat?! or Yeeeeeeees! when they mean Yesssss!

  20. FWG 02/22/2013 at 10:53 am

    Guilty as charged. Sometimes the Queen’s English just comes across as cold in texts.

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