This email sounds angry: New 'tone-checker' tells you what impression your email REALLY gives

Everyone has done it at one time or another. You dash off an email to a friend or colleague and receive one back from someone who takes immediate offence to what you have written. Now a technology firm has come up a system which it claims will stop misunderstandings in emails by analysing the phrases you use to see what tone they create.ToneCheck, developed by Canadian firm Lymbix, works as an add-on to Microsoft’s Outlook email service and checks the tone of your email in the same way a spell-checker does. After you have composed an email, you simply hit Tonecheck button and it scans the email and tells you the dominant tone of the message. Users can even set a tone ‘tolerance’ and the system will stop you sending an email before checking if it falls outside of your usual parameters. You can then adjust the tone before sending or simply ignore the warning and send it regardless. The program’s sensitivity can also be adjusted and it offers eight different ‘emotional ratings’ to help you get the tone of your email right. These include Affection and Amusement at the positive end of the scale while Sadness, Anger, Fear and Humiliation are the emotions most users will try and avoid. Lymbix has also developed a version which monitors your updates on Twitter for any unintentional deviation in tone. The service is available as a download from today and is free for the first 30 days. (Daily Mail)