The 'fine art' of writing in social forums...some musings and thoughts about avoiding exasperation on the site.

In the age of candlelight and quill pens, our ancestors spent many hours pouring out their hearts, their thoughts, their revolutions on paper. Reading them today is a window into the soul of the times, be it poetic praise for mountains, letters from the trenches expressing both fear and hope or even simple gripes about the discomfort of travelling on the stagecoach.

It seems to me that those furious scribblers had an innate understanding of audience. Okay, they didn't always know someone would bind up their writings and sell them to 21st century reader, or that historians would pour over them for clues to the past but still they seemed to understand that the reader could not see them, may not have seen them for a while or didn't know them that well and chose their words with a view to making explicit what they weren't able to show physically.

In my opinion, the modern age of the social forum harks back to those times with its emphasis on the written word over the spoken and that perhaps those of us who participate even a little should bear in mind that although it is a conversation, its not one that has all the advantages of physical presence; body language, facial expression, the benefit of knowing the other person. We reveal ourselves through words alone and perhaps sometimes we forget that the people reading it haven't the advantage of seeing our grinning faces as we pen something we think hilarious and they take the comment as deadly serious.

That is not to discourage the glorious vein of satire and humour that runs through many HOL discussions, far from it. I would rather ask readers to take a step back and ask themselves,is this person serious? Could they be following in the steps of the great Swift and saying what appears seems to be the unsayable with a view to making us challenge our own orthodoxies?

And writers, are we sometimes forgetting that those personal conversations, so important to get your point across, read like nothing more than a personal disagreement held in a public place? Would you stand in the village hall in front of 900 potential witnesses and have an argument? Well that's what you're doing when you have private disputes in public fora online.

Perhaps what I'm saying is simply that writing on a forum isn't an ephemeral thing. Your words remain there long after you've got over it, moved on, or whatever the latest jargon is, and that is all some people have to judge you on.

So what? well that's a personal thing, maybe you don't care what a bunch of people you don't know think except that this forum is a bit different. We are neighbours, we might come across each other in the street or at a different social situation, happens to me all the time, and do you really want to have to shuffle with embarrassment when you face someone you've called a 'mealy mouthed weasel face' online across the meeting table?

Granted not all letters from past centuries were meant to be for public consumption, those billets doux following up the sighs and modest blushes of the dance, the notes dashed off to make assignations, the message to the hatmaker assuring them of full payment soon...well if you have billets doux or messages for your hatmaker to send on the site, we have the advantage of private emails (add someone as a connection first) in your inbox, comment boxes on pages (not private but more like drawing someone into a corner to whisper sweet nothings) and the IM for exchanging notes and queries with someone who is currently online.

and if you regret your comments, you can of course delete the remark at a later date, the electronic equivalent of demanding your letters back from a rogue, and erase the evidence of your flash of online temper if not perhaps the memory of it...

Finally , I draw your attention to the title of this comment, writing is an art and you make art when you write, you don't have to be good at it, lor knows we are not qualified to judge what is good, purely subjective, but cultivating your sense of audience when you write might avoid that sense of 'oh crumbs' when a load of people take potshots at your 'online' head.

Liz

These are purely personal observations and do not represent the viewpoint of anyone but myself