I don’t think I do, my reading seems to be dry. If I reread something, maybe I add in inflection and tone, but I do write with it. I think I expect people to read my words with my intended tone, though. Lol, I expect y’all to understand my voice I guess hahahahah

I don’t assume tone. I just try and read it cold.

It is difficult to convey feeling and emotion in writing, even the best writers among us have this difficulty. Part of the reason is the short answers we are giving in this forum. Emotions run high and sometimes we are so excited to make a point, we often do not make it with sensitivity. That being said, depending on who I am responding to, I enjoy cutting someone down if I feel that they really deserve it.

I say in my head, its hard when posts are replies to your own post not to project a sarcastic tone.

My goal is to be doxastically open as possible for all conversations. I really like exploring the epistemology of why people say what they say and believe what they believe.

I hadn't given it any thought, but thinking about it now, I guess I give it whatever the grammar and syntax appears to assign it. When making my own posts or answers I try to be as specific in my use of language as possible.

I try not to do that too, but sometimes a comment will look to me like the intent was one thing when it could actually be something completely different because a simple vocal inflection wasn't there.

i assume everyone is a monotonal robot.

My dearly departed mother would love to say,"It's not what you say, darling, but how you say it."

I won't argue with that.

But that's so very hard to do writing online, at least for me. Either you're a poet or a writer with a stroke of genius.

Pretty much what others have said. I don't so much imagine "no tone" but go with "best possible tone." That may sound like a limiting factor, but with me "best possible" is usually the opposite of limiting as I have a generous heart and tend to think that most people are fundamentally good and mean well. Your strategy, AMGT, of asking carefully for clarification is definitely a good one.

As Silvereyes was saying about herself, my analytical tendencies in my own posts sometimes work against me. Readers sometimes think I'm being aggressive or didactic when that's not actually my intended tone at all. I don't make that mistake as often as I used to because I'm more aware of it now. Like anything, it is more likely to crop up when I am tired. By the same token, I can sometimes see the same issue in others - folks who are coming across more aggressively or didactically than they intend, simply because they've gotten caught up in the logic of what they are disassembling and forgotten their audience for the moment. When I see that, I try to gently call attention to the issue of how the person is coming across. Doesn't always work.

That is interesting. It's natural for us to do that, we try to infer subtext from anything we read, from things like vocab and spelling/grammar. We all probably shouldn't, but our brains do it kinda automatically, and that impulse is hard to resist.

We have to rely on the writer to express himself or herself with conceptual and emotional clarity.

Honestly, I have never considered it. I'm such a lousy reader that most of the time I'm contemplating what the post is trying to convey to me. I'm sure I do it but I never internally considered is this the tone or could it be different? I'll practice doing that for now on

I always give the benefit of doubt, otherwise I just assign them 'jerk' status and move on quickly!

The internet is an absurd place to bring your feelings. I constantly see people get upset at other's attempts at sarcasm or humor. Unless it's obvious like when someone uses caps every fifth word to explain how dumb you are, I always assume people mean well though I'm sure a lot of people only go online to take out their frustrations from living in an irrational world. You can never really know someone until you actually spend time with them.

I'm a sarcastic shit. I do, however, treat people the way I expect to be treated. It's just that I expect the worst of everyone, even after they have repeatedly been nothing but kind and forthright. Most people avoid me, which I am genuinely fine with, because those that stick around are the best kind of people (for someone like me) to have around. Trust comes exceedingly slow with me, but when it comes, I hurt when a friend hurts to the point I can get physically ill. I think this has always been the case and I have just been hardening my shell over the years as my judgement in people has been honed so that I can choose better who i let in.