>The tone of your writing indicates your attitude and your feelings towards the person you are writing to. When we speak, our tone is indicated by our voice, but when we write, our choice of words tells the reader how we feel. In business writing it is important to use a tone which is courteous and sincere.
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>To imply that writing has no tone, implies even more strongly that you don't know too much about writing. Having read your posts here, and at the wiki, I know this is not true, but any 1st year composition course goes into great detail on tone.

Excellent point Bill! In regards to formal writing of course, but still a good challenge to make. But what I am trying to say is that up here, fast responses are often more important than carefully written responses. Therefore I dont consider messages to be formal writing, so tone is an interpretation as opposed to an intention of the writer in most circumstances. So what happens, the writer gets excited to help someone, whips off a message that sounds ok in his head, message comes across the line portraying various meanings to different people, and someone assumes one meaning and cries foul over the tone of the message. Tone... what tone? Who took the time to comtemplate the interpretion of the tone of their message. We dont need no stinking tones, therefore lighten up folks =D)