I bet most of you don’t think about how many ways what you said can be read, well you need to when taking spoken sarcasm and translating it to text.

I learned when I was at Realtor.com that my direct communication approach could often be misinterpreted as hostile or sarcastic. Over time I learned to master the tone in my writing, so that if ever there was a question, it was because I was trying to keep someone on their toes, and motivate them with a double meaning message.  This is OK on rare occasion, but if you speak “double tone” (to me: meaning the same passage can be read with more than one tone of emotion) all the time, you will be taxing your readers and friends much more than most people can stand.

I believe this affects people less practiced at written communication; almost any social media with updates. Think about it, until the last few years with all the social media coming out of the wood work, how much written communication was used by the average person. Sure there was e-mail, but you are given much more room to try to convey the emotion behind the writing in an e-mail, however when you are limiting yourself to 140 characters, how can someone know when you are being sarcastic?