Tone Indicators

General
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Tone Indicators

Ive been thinking about tone tags recently.
A quick reminder what they are. Tone Indicators are tags/Indicators added onto a message to convey a tone that typically cannot be done over text like it would when spoken. For example /j or /s. They can be helpful, especially to neurodivergent people and you can find a list of them here.

A problem

While they are very useful I have been thinking about how their typical use actually isn’t too great. Yes, when you know what the tags mean it can help you but sometimes/some people dont. An example of this is recently quite a few times Ive seen /nfta and if it wasn’t for its meaning being defined in a footnote, I would have to search up its meaning . This defeats one feature of tone indicators/tags, being brief ways to show the tone of a message.

Additionally, they are usually added at the end of the message, so you will more often read the message first then see the tag.

A solution?

Someone [1] recommended something at some point. The suggestion to write tone tags like <joke> this is a great joke <joke>. Ive been warming up to this idea, or at the very least 1. putting the tag at the start for some more important tones like joking, sarcasm, rhetorical, and 2. ditching some of the brevity so you don’t need prior knowledge of their meanings.

What do other people think?

  1. unfortunately don’t remember who ↩︎

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<message>
<sarcasm>oh no everything will turn into XML </sarcasm>
<rhetorical>is such truly the final evolution of things?
What happened with Crabs? </rhetorical>
</message>

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i've seen a suggestion of tone tags being written out in full, so you get the full context

like this /example

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I feel like I have a similar conundrum with tone tags currently as I used to have with most internet abbreviations.[1] In that I simply lack context for the vast majority of them upon first seeing it. And either need to learn the specific tone tag through experience, looking it up, and/or using it and hoping I guessed the meaning right. Though it usually doesn't bother me unless it inhibits my ability to understand what's being said.[2]

That being said, all of the suggestions brought up so far (masterlist included) are very good ones! I think the best solution is some combination of them all. In addition, just doing what's possible to make internet vernacular less intimidating for new folk goes a long way![3]

  1. e.g., lol, lmao, ikr, tbh, tbf, smh, etc. ↩︎

  2. which is pretty rare, fortunately ↩︎

  3. /gen :3 ↩︎

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I have come to detest tone indicators in my time.

I find that they cause me more confusion than clarification, since there's no standardized use for these things.

Also, frankly? feels completely unnecessary. Just clarify how you mean something in plain words. Easy as that. "That was a joke" or "That was sarcasm" would do just fine. Furthermore - why do we need to abbreviate them into one or two letters? Just write /sarcasm or /joking; I genuinely cannot conceive of what use there is for adding needless ambiguity by obfuscating the intent of something meant to clarify intent.[1]

They're just. Argh. Probably my second most hated internet speech quirk right after kids adopting typing quirks from homestuck and doing it all wrong.

This video by jan misali is a great summarization of why I also feel like they're worse than useless most of the time.

  1. And, I mean, if you want something resembling paratextual information in the text itself, just use [sarcasm] statement [/sarcasm] like we used to back in the old days. ↩︎

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I like them :)

Sometimes I have to search/ask the meaning, but then its another flavour of expression over the internet

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