The language of e-mail 111
communicative domain. But the speed and spontaneity with which
e-mails can be written and sent makes it more likely that the
processes of reflection normally used with written language (see
chapter 2) will not take place. Evidently many people do not read
through their message before sending it – often with the unin-
tended consequence that the first reply they receive is a request for
clarification. The style manuals differ over the question of just how
much editing should take place: on the one hand, they are anxious
to maintain their belief in the medium’s informality; on the other
hand,theyaredrivenbytheirawarenessthat,themoreidiosyncratic
behaviour departs from the norms of standard English, the greater
the likelihood of unintelligibility. Most of these manuals, written
with a business readership in mind, end up paying lip-service to
an informality-induced deviance and coming down hard on the
side of the orthodo xrules of the standard language. Misspellings,
for example, are a natural feature of the body message in an e-mail
(not in headers, where senders are usually scrupulous, knowing the
consequences of error). They occur, regardless of the educational
background of the writer, in any situation where there is fast typing
and a lack of editorial revision.^21 For the most part, these errors
cause little or no disruption to the communicative process. No-one
is likely to be misled by such e-lines as the following:
I’ll procede with the practical arrangments.
Hav eyou got the tikcets yet?Noristhereadergoingtomakeasocialjudgementaboutthewriter’s
educational ability, on the basis of such data – a contrast with what
wouldhappen if someone wrote a traditional letter containing
such errors. On the other hand, some misspellings can make a
reader pause, or make an utterance ambiguous or unintelligible:
Cabwereachyouby8?(^21) Even this must not be overestimated. Casting my eye over the last 50 messages I received,
from people aged early 20s to mid-60s, with several intimate or from my own peer-group,
only 2 had spelling errors, and these were isolated ones. My correspondents evidently
revise greatly. (After reading which, my son adds: ‘Of course we do. We’re writing to a
linguist! We might be used as data, otherwise!’)