for the people

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 18, 2001 | by Stephen Goode

E-mail Conversations Can Be an Emotional Experience

There are secrets to electronic communication, terrible secrets, the revelation of which may be regarded by the cognoscenti as justifying grim vengeance. One of these is the number of emotions that can be conveyed in an e-mail by a colon combined with a few electronic symbols. According to the recently released Email Basics: A Review, a kiss-and-tell book by Kristin J. Arnold, there are quite a few emotions that can be so expressed -- apathy and outrage, for example, or happiness and gloom.

Here's some of the code, using the double-dotted punctuation mark. In colon-chat:

* Apathy is :-I

* Outrage is :-(0)

* Laughter is :-D

* Skepticism is :-/

* Sarcasm is :-

* Confusion is :-Q

These combinations for conveying feelings are called emoticons, the book's author tells us. And the code contains at least a couple of other e-mail ways of saying things that bear notice. To blow a kiss to the person you're e-mailing (as long as it's not your boss), for example, try using a colon, a hyphen and an asterisk :-*.

If you'd rather be a little more coy, just type a semicolon, hyphen and a closed parenthesis, ;-), to represent a wink.

All this seems a bit too new and too, well, technological and wonkish for this column, which has retro tendencies, to say the least. So it was of great comfort to come across territory more familiar in another article by Associated Press business writer Lisi de Bourbon on whose pages for the people encountered mention of the e-mail dictionary.

This was advice on how to give a good handshake, and it comes from Pachter & Associates, a Cherry Hill, N.J., business-communications training firm:

First, your hand always should move toward the other person's at a slight angle. Second, as hands join, your thumb joint should touch the other person's before wrapping your fingers around their palm. Third, squeeze firmly (but not heavy-handedly). Last, pump the other person's hand two or three times and let go.

Now, whatever the reason for any of that, it is useful information. For the people simply wouldn't have been ready to hear that a handshake is now :-: , or whatever it might be.

Horses Not So Wild About Public Art in Chicago

The great (and very libertarian) actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell (1850-1940) was famous for the many roles she played. But her most famous utterance may well be one she made in her own words: "It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses."

Campbell's words may well have been on the minds of Chicago officials recently when the city's carriage horses were given a preview sniff, or perhaps a better term is a "pre-sniff," of some of the items in an about-to-open public-art display called "Suite Home Chicago."

The works the horses were allowed to see and sniff included, according to a dispatch from Reuters, a piece called "Casting Couch." This modern masterpiece is a sofa on which a producer sits. When a passerby sits down on the couch, the action of sitting triggers playing of the song "You Ought to Be in Pictures." Another was "Mon-Divan," a multitiered sofa set in very bright colors.

Word was that the homes looked upon the public art somewhat nervously but quickly grew accustomed to the pieces. Their reaction was nothing like the way the four-legged fellows responded to a show two years ago called "Cows On Parade." That show included placement of 300 brilliantly decorated fiberglass cows to graze on downtown Chicago street corners, and it spooked the carriage homes royally.

"The horses saw them. They were bright and unusual. They thought the cows were going to eat them and galloped off," recalled Dan Sampson, owner of a local carriage house. For the people understands. This column has had the same response to some public art it has seen.

Let us hear your ideas for this feature. Write to Insight, For the People, 3600 New York Ave. N.E., Washington, DC 20002. Or fax us: (202) 529-2484; e-mail: editor@insightmag.com.