Tone Indicators: Enhancing Online Communication

Unlike in speech, tone and expression can be hard to express and detect in a text message or any written content. This means communicating without any facial expressions, gestures, or tone. While communicating through substitutions for tone indicators such as emojis to show expression, capitalized letters to indicate shouting or enthusiasm as well as excessive use of punctuation marks may help convey tone to a certain extent, the range of cues they communicate is very limited.

In order to convey the content to the people receiving the message in the way intended by the person putting across the message or text is where ‘tone indicators’ come into play.

What Are Tone Indicators?

Tone indicators are paralinguistic indicators that are included at the end of any statement to help convey the subtext and tone of the content. They are simply a combination of symbols and letters to put across the tone of the text without any confusion while communicating online. They include simple shorthand notations for words used to convey intent and emotion. For example, ‘/j’ is short for ‘joking’ and is used to express that the text or the comment is a joke.

Why Are They Used?

A psychology professor at UCLA - Albert Mehrabian stated in a famous study that humans only tend to perceive fragments of what is conveyed without the presence of tone, expression, and body language.

Hence, tone indicators serve a good purpose in the following ways:

They help in clarifying the tone/subtext of the content: This tool helps in deciphering and decoding such text online can be inconvenient for many people such as people who are new to the English language and neurodivergent people, who may have trouble interpreting the tone in face-to-face conversations. Content online is even less indicative of tone and expression which makes it a hurdle to pick up subtle cues.
Helps Accentuate Expression in Text: While emoticons and emojis may serve their purpose in specifying the expression or intent in the message, they do so only to a certain extent. For example, a slightly smiling emoji may be perceived as a conveyal of passive aggressiveness and this often leads to confusion rather than clarity.
Keeps Misinterpretation of Messages to a Minimum: Due to the aforementioned points regarding communication via text, clarity of expression and intent becomes key in written communications. Use of tone indicators reduces false impressions given by the text which may have been completely unintentional which gives rise to conflicts, arguments, and misunderstandings.

History of Tone Indicators

The idea of tone indicators isn’t something new. Astonishingly, it has been around since the 1580s. It was first proposed by Henry Denham, a British Printer who punctuated a sentence with an upside-down question mark to indicate a rhetorical sentence. Years later, another writer, John Wilkins in 1668 suggested an upside-down exclamation mark to indicate a sentence as one expressing irony. However, these writing tools didn’t really gain momentum and their usage gradually declined and vanished in the 1700s. The closest thing to tone indicators used today are emojis. However, their use causes more confusion than clarity of tone as different people have associated different meanings to them as previously mentioned.

A Quick Guide to Using Tone Indicators

These are some more commonly used tone indicators:

/j = joking: It is used to indicate that the comment is to be taken as a joke.
/hj = half joking: It is used to indicate that a comment that appears to be a joke actually has some serious intent.
/s = sarcastic: Indicates that the comment is to be taken sarcastically.
/srs = serious: Indicates that the comment is to be taken seriously.
/nsrs = not serious: It is used to indicate that the comment is not to be taken seriously.
/lh = light-hearted: It is used to indicate that the comment is to be taken in a cheery and light-hearted manner (similar to /j).
/gen = genuine: It is used to indicate that the sender is asking or expressing something with genuine intent.

These tone indicators can be used to more accurately specify the tone of the person putting across a comment, post, or a text message.

Accessibility and Tone Indicators

Tools such as these help provide a more accessible environment, where individuals with disabilities may often feel excluded and thus, provide them with a positive and supportive environment when online.

They help them adapt as much as possible owing to the use of tone indicators and instills a sense of togetherness among all the individuals in the online communities and hence giving rise to intersubjectivity within members. They help reduce ambiguity in conversations and provide everyone a safe space to interact.

There are many tone indicators that exist. While it’s not necessary to know all the tone indicators out there, being aware of the most used tone indicators itself is quite helpful. It is also not necessary to use this tool in every sentence. It can be used when the need arises, such as when a message can be interpreted in more ways than one or when there is not enough clarity on the tone of the text at first glance.

Wrapping Up

Tone indicators, used on a wider scale can help everyday online communication be clear and efficient for everyone and helps minimize miscommunications. Of course, it is always important to keep in mind the individual’s preference and what they feel would be helpful and what they feel comfortable with.