Thread by @asymmetricinfo

I don't know if other Americans have this trouble when they deal with Europeans but--I know my liberal use of exclamation points makes me look, to them, faintly mad, and yet cannot stop myself from sprinkling them in, because the email looks so bare and cold without them.

All right, now it appears I have to defend profligate American use of exclamation points and emoticons.

Which requires us to detour into another question: why do Americans smile so damn much?

It turns out there is an answer to this question: societies with a lot of immigration, particularly linguistically diverse immigration, smile more than societies that have relatively little.

Why? Because when you are crossing cultural barriers, you have to exaggerate your emotional affect to ensure that people raised in a different culture understand that you are being friendly.

And when you have no language in common? Grin like a madman.

America, with 200 years of near-constant immigrant influx, thus developed a cultural habit of extremely exaggerated positive emotional affect. Yes, I get why others find it grating--for the same reason we find used car salesmen faintly nauseating. But it eases social friction.

Online, our habit of what seems to many non-Americans to be an almost creepy over friendliness, translates into using lots of emoticons and exclamation points to ensure that there is no mistaking our goodwill.

To leave them out feels deliberately rude. Because when we get an email without them, we assume the other person is mad.

No, literally--when I was at The Economist, we Americans used to frequently assume our deputy editor was pissed at us, because his emails were so brisk.

I use my fork like an American when I'm abroad, because that's how I was raised. And so with the exclamation points. And there's nothing wrong with that, m'kay?

Thanks guys! You're awesome for listening!