Gen Z Netiquettes

As someone who speak chinese. I can confirm this. If your boss or parent ever send message to you with your full name and properly closed sentence. You are running into something serious. It's not a English only rule.

I'm not talking about faux pas. I'm talking about the things you're expected to do, or not do, for the sake of managing the emotions of others.

> When you write with perfect grammar and punctuation, most people don't know how to read into the nuance

I still can't understand the argument here, it sounds so off that seems fabricated to me.

When you read the Divine Comedy (we study it in high school in Italy) the grammar is not in current modern Italian, the style is from 550 years ago, the poem is written in hendecasyllables in terza rima [1], the references are often obscure, but in no point of it the tone is hard to understand, because the author conveys it explicitly.

  l’ora del tempo e la dolce stagione;
  ma non sì che paura non mi desse
  la vista che m’apparve d’un leone.

  Questi parea che contra me venisse
  con la test’alta e con rabbiosa fame,
  sì che parea che l’aere ne tremesse. 
  

Dante is saying that it was a beautiful day of spring, but not as beautiful to not be scared by the sight of a lion that went his direction, looking enraged by the hunger, making "the air tremble"

Writing is a non-verbal, not-in-person, form of communication, you can't look for what's not in it.

Assuming a neutral tone unless specified otherwise, it's always the best bet.

Also, as I've said before, improper grammar could also mean "I don't know the grammar of your language well enough", if I'm writing French, I make a lot of mistakes because I don't use it very often, so the tone is the last of my concerns and the people reading it could easily think it's from a 9 year old kid who hasn't finished primary school yet.

If you think that correct grammar is more than just "the proper way to use the language" you're most probably seeing too much into it.

> Imagine you're working with a new PM and he tells you the team's progress is 'acceptable.' What does that mean exactly?

it means "acceptable"

in a scale from 0 to 10 acceptable is >= 6 and but, when in doubt, ask, words are free.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terza_rima

> Assuming a neutral tone unless specified otherwise, it's always the best bet.

I actually believe most writing is non-neutral in nature. Every word choice and sentence structure conveys meaning, intentional or not.

For example, why did Dante describe the sight of a lion as making "the air tremble" rather than cause "a stillness in the air"? Or a slightly more powerful variant, "a silence in the air"? My guess is that he wanted to call attention to how dominating the lion's presence was, that even the air was humbled/scared. That's how intimidating and commandeering the lion was. (Very intentional word choice here by me to pair with enraged!)

Maybe that's the wrong interpretation, but we also have people who study exactly this! The nuance of literary works and their meanings.

The article mentions a difference between 'lol' and 'haha' - if you boil it down, is that really so different from 'the air tremble' vs. 'a stillness in the air'? It's word choice again, ultimately.

> Also, as I've said before, improper grammar could also mean "I don't know the grammar of your language well enough", if I'm writing French, I make a lot of mistakes because I don't use it very often, so the tone is the last of my concerns and the people reading it could easily think it's from a 9 year old kid who hasn't finished primary school yet.

Maybe this is why we disagree - I believe that once relative fluency is assumed, tone becomes more important.

Mandarin is a great example here. Most people who are just starting to learn Mandarin focus on vocabulary, pronouns, etc. But once you get to a more advanced stage, it reveals a really unique twist.

Informal 'modal particles' [1] are optional in sentences but also can significantly change the mood. You'd never use them in formal writing (they're not exactly professional), but in practice people use them in everyday written communications. Interestingly enough, they're by default pronounced in a neutral tone but can also be inflected with more emotion even though Mandarin is already a tonal language.

English doesn't have modal particles, and the closest equivalent I've seen are these Gen Z Netiquettes (which aren't only for Gen Z as a few people have pointed out).

---

As an example:

1. 吃饭: eat food

2. 吃饭吧: eat food, we should (friendly but also commanding)

3. 吃饭吗: eat food, want to? (friendly but more suggestive)

---

In English, you could write it like this instead:

1. food

2. we should get food

3. want to get food?

---

But that's not exactly right, because Mandarin also has formal sentences for those forms:

1. 吃饭: eat food

2. 应该吃饭: should eat food

3. 要不要吃饭: want to eat food or not?

---

So closer parallels in English instead could be:

1. food

2. food :eyes_emoji: [2]

3. food? :drooling_face_emoji: [3]

---

And as the article mentions, you can even merge 2 modal particles into a new one that's equal to the combined mood of both. For extra nuance!

e.g. 吃饭了吗: eat food, have you already done it? (friendly)

I think there's some truth to the idea that emojis are a bit of madness (but are also here to stay), but I disagree that nuance doesn't exist in written communication. It's existed for hundreds of years already, as mentioned above in the Dante example. Emojis are just a modern-day version of nuance.

In your original post, you mention:

> Not doing it [capitalization] proves that people either don't care or don't know the basic rules of the language, which says a lot more than doing it properly.

The third (more charitable) possibility is that people are intentionally doing it for nuance. For example, I capitalize in formal emails with customers but use lowercase with friends. My guess is that most people I work with do the same, and more importantly know others are also aware of this.

So at work, I can either choose to treat my coworkers as closer to customers or closer to friends. You can likely guess what that means. ( it was the first )

Lastly, while you may personally disagree with the existence of nuance, it's hard to deny that a large chunk of people do infer nuance from text - just looking at this HN thread alone! So the takeaway I'd lightly (and not firmly!) suggest again is that it's worth optimizing for others in certain situations even if it seems like madness.

[1] https://medium.com/@glossika/chinese-grammar-how-to-use-moda...

[2] https://emojipedia.org/eyes/

[3] https://emojipedia.org/drooling-face/

It depends on the context, but the standard smiley face has effectively been replaced with the following two:

https://emojipedia.org/smiling-face/

https://emojipedia.org/smiling-face-with-smiling-eyes/