Internet Etiquette

Although I love email, the Internet, and Face Book, it is probably worth revisiting Internet etiquette. Chatting on Face Book or responding to the status of a friend is not the same as sitting across the table chatting with them. You lose the visual cues that impart more information than their actual words. Sometimes what seems like snappy repartee in your mind becomes obnoxious or inappropriate to another person—especially if you are responding to something a friend of a friend said.

I have been guilty of this myself and goodness knows who I may have offended, but I try very hard to edit myself and make sure that my comments are pertinent to what is being discussed and use no innuendo, particularly with friends of the opposite sex.

There is a little story making its way around the Internet about how Southern women impart their disdain for someone else by saying, Bless her\his heart—instead of using some pejorative.

My mother had two books of etiquette when I was growing up, but she always said that these tomes boiled down to doing the nicest possible thing in the nicest possible way. Life if hard enough—especially right now—and we ought to contribute to the conversation in a positive, inoffensive way, not display our ignorance to one and all. Bless their heart.