emails are hard to read

wired.com relates the results of a study of internet correspondence published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology [note my personal opinion: studies and/or papers can be goofy]

the tone of a message can be lost. the reader assumes the tone will be read correctly, the reader often misreads the tone and most alarmingly believe their misreads to be accurate.

The researchers took 30 pairs of undergraduate students and gave each one a list of 20 statements about topics like campus food or the weather. Assuming either a serious or sarcastic tone, one member of each pair e-mailed the statements to his or her partner. The partners then guessed the intended tone and indicated how confident they were in their answers.
Those who sent the messages predicted that nearly 80 percent of the time their partners would correctly interpret the tone. In fact the recipients got it right just over 50 percent of the time.
[snip]
At the same time, those reading messages unconsciously interpret them based on their current mood, stereotypes and expectations. Despite this, the research subjects thought they accurately interpreted the messages nine out of 10 times.

that is a recipe for alotta misunderstandings