Related to but distinct from LRT:

I wish people would think harder about what they signal when they hit "Reply" and then type a message and hit send.

I will explain what I mean.

The very stark example is, say that I tweet something about something that Donald Trump said. Say you read it and think, "Donald Trump is a buffoon and should shut up."

You hit reply and type "What a buffoon! STFU!" and hit tweet.

What do I see?

I see a reply, to me, that says, "What a buffoon! STFU!"

You know that you're talking to Trump, calling Trump a buffoon and saying he should shut up.

Do I know that? Do I have any reason to know that?

You are likely to think that your intentions are obvious to me because they are obvious to you. (Google "illusion of transparency"; we all do this.) But there's no difference outwardly between your reply and one from someone calling me a buffoon and telling me to shut up.

Probably a lot of people can see the problem there, because it is a stark example.

Let me give you a less stark one. Say you read a tweet you agree with, and you want to expand on the point.

So you hit reply and start typing, "Actually," and then make your point.

Now, if you play that out in your head as a conversation... people don't usually signal agreement by saying, "Actually." In fact, it's a whole trope that this is how people step in to correct someone who is saying something wrong, in their view.

And it's not always "actually" or similar words, but every day on this site I witness or am party to misunderstandings that happen for a very simple reason:

The person replying thought it went without saying they agreed, and didn't specify what their reply was there to do.

Face to face you might be signaling your agreement with body language and gesture, but I think even more than that, there's more of a tendency to say, "Yeah, I agree." and "Definitely." and other things that maybe strike us as filler when we're writing a tweet.

Like, it's not necessary to have twenty tweets that say nothing but "Yes, definitely." or "I agree." or "This is certainly true." or whatever. But if you're trying to have a conversation, or add something to one... it is worth spelling out that you are in agreement.

A lot of people treat the replies on a tweet, especially one from a "big account" (which often just means bigger than theirs) or from someone they don't follow as basically an open comment space, not considering that from the POV of the other person, a reply is a *reply*.

If you hit "reply" on a tweet, your comment arrives in the notifications of the original poster *as a comment addressed to them*, without any context or explanation or preamble, and I think a lot of people don't really think about that.

A previous time I tried explaining this I had a person thinking I want everybody to agree with me, and that's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying: if you agree, *and* you feel like you have something to add, make the agreement explicit. We can't read minds or intentions.

Related to this: some people like to leave their commentary on a topic as a reply out of the sense that a big account or well-traveled thread will give them a bigger platform for their view than if they just tweeted it out themselves as a separate tweet.

I've got feelings about that. I can't control how people use Twitter, but my preference would be that we use the reply function for replies.

E.g., if you're answering a question tweet, reply to the person who asked the question, not the answer from someone you follow.

I just think it would be cleaner and clearer if we all did that.

But that aside: being conscious that your reply *is a reply and will be read as a reply* can help avoid misunderstandings.

I see so many interactions on here every day where someone hits reply on a tweet, types out something that's a criticism or admonition or whatever, and then is positively indignant that the person *they literally replied to* thinks the response was aimed at them. It's baffilng.

People say this isn't a great platform for conversation. I've had great conversations on it. Including with strangers. But being clear about what you're doing when you hit reply -- clear to yourself, clear to others in your tweet -- is a big part of that.