this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2025
639 points (97.9% liked)
Comic Strips
20545 readers
4739 users here now
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
The rules are simple:
- The post can be a single image, an image gallery, or a link to a specific comic hosted on another site (the author's website, for instance).
- The comic must be a complete story.
- If it is an external link, it must be to a specific story, not to the root of the site.
- You may post comics from others or your own.
- If you are posting a comic of your own, a maximum of one per week is allowed (I know, your comics are great, but this rule helps avoid spam).
- The comic can be in any language, but if it's not in English, OP must include an English translation in the post's 'body' field (note: you don't need to select a specific language when posting a comic).
- Politeness.
- AI-generated comics aren't allowed.
- Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
Web of links
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world: "I use Arch btw"
- !memes@lemmy.world: memes (you don't say!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's interesting to me that people put so much effort into creating rules around what subtle punctuation differences mean when there's a billion reasons not to assume we know what any of it means. Typos, being in a hurry, being a different person with different opinions... Basically texting is like 50% at best for communicating emotions even if we don't make these random assumptions.
Tone is very hard to convey through text. I think rules like these can be helpful to get more information across without having to type more words.
I mean, that's exactly my point. Unless you can know people are paying full attention, didn't make a mistake, and also know/subscribe to the exact same rules, then the potential for misunderstanding is increased not decreased.
It's not fundamentally different to body language or tone in person. How do we know what a gesture is supposed to convey? Everyone needs to be on the same page, right?
And yet, it seems to work. Just as phone texts seem to work. Humans are excellent at language, we pick these things up subconsciously and through exposure over time to people's/the same person's texts
If you want things to move in that direction, it takes momentum. If nobody does it for fear of confusion, then it will never change. So I say we make that little effort, and explain ourselves if need be.
I say let's embrace trying to be clear by using more words, not less. Within reason anyhow.
Using more words to describe emotional content is not really how humans use language, but you do have the next best thing, which are tone indicators