As I read Zimmer's article, it occurred to me that looking for cues to personality might be the better strategy.  Without realizing it, people reveal a great deal about themselves in the way they express themselves in these online missives.  Of course, there is the occasional "Freudian Slip," that creeps into an email that might take the form of a "reply all" that includes the person who you're criticizing. Overall, though, the Big Five model could provide a far more reliable way to categorize and even diagnose people's online personalities than focusing solely on word use or punctuation.

Before learning how the Big Five personality types can help you present yourself more effectively in your online world, let's make sure you understand what they are. Developed by psychologists Paul Costa and Robert McCrae, they are now widely used in personnel assessment, forensic psychology, psychotherapy, and research on health and behavior. Big Five theory claimed, for many years, that the personality types were unchangeable throughout life, particularly after the age of 30, but Costa and McCrae now acknowledge that changes can occur well into the later years of adulthood. Even so, at any point in time, many of your behaviors can be tracked back to the expression of these basic personality tendencies, or "traits."

Here's a brief recap of the Five Factors. Conveniently, you can remember them because their abbreviations form the word "OCEAN," (or "CANOE"). I'll stick with OCEAN for now.

Openness to Experience: This is the willingness to entertain new ideas, to enjoy exploring fantasies and adventure, and to appreciate the arts.

Conscientiousness: As the term implies, people who are conscientious are punctual, neat, and attentive to detail. They can be counted on to complete what they start.

Extraversion: People high on extraversion are outgoing, sociable, and willing to self-disclose. They're typically happy and optimistic. Conversely, people high on introversion, the opposite end of the scale, prefer to be by themselves, are uncomfortable in social situations, and don't like to reveal much about their inner states.

Agreeableness: Easy-going and immune to the aggravations that come from everyday annoyances, people high in agreeableness are also calm and level-headed.  You won't hear much complaining from them.

Neuroticism: This is perhaps the darkest of the Big Five, because people high on Neuroticism are prone to excessive worry, anxiety, and feelings that others don't like them. They are pessmistic, always expecting the worse. They tend to ruminate over their perceived failures and are high in self-doubt.

Now that you know what the Big Five are, let's look at how they're reflected in your online interactions in your emails. You're probably not just one type because most people have a combination of the Big Five traits, but to make things clearer, I'll focus on the extreme of each type and for each, provide recommendations for how to manage the problems that your email personality type may cause you.  

The open to experience email type: Your emails are whimsical and entertaining. You may end your email with a sign-off that includes a reflective quotation. You don't like using capital letters, but you do like using abbreviations. When someone presents you with a problem, you tend to think outside the box and come up with creative solutions. They may not be feasible, but they can shed a new perspective on the issue allowing the people high in conscientiousness to work out the details. Your emails are short because you don't really feel like spending much time on a particular problem. You may be that person who hits "reply all" instead of just "reply" because you didn't actually take the time to examine the recipients before you pushed "send."

Recommendations: For the most part, being high on openness to experience is a good thing in emails because at least they won't be boring. The only danger is that you might come across as flaky or impulsive. If this diagnosis fits you, my only suggestion would be that you avoid these dangers by waiting a minute or two before you push "send" to double-check your grammar and spelling, making sure you actually read the email thoroughly before replying, and testing out the feasibility of any solutions you've proposed. Also, take care to edit the "to" and "subject" lines By the way, Gmail can be particularly bad because it hides much of an earlier conversation and lumps related emails together. Make sure that one didn't sneak into the conversation that doesn't belong there. Taming your impulsivity is particularly important if you're using mobile technology, which can be unforgiving when it comes to proofreading or giving careful thought to your response.

The conscientious email type: Your emails are thoughtful and purposive. Chances are they are very detailed, possibly running one or two pages with specific suggestions about how to handle each aspect of the problem at hand. Your inbox is virtually empty because you respond as soon as you receive the email, though you do take your time in composing your response. You read and re-read your email, and rarely do you have typos, grammatical errors, or abbreviated words. Your favorite emails involve such topics as writing contracts or the minutes of meetings (or scrupulously reviewing those written by others). You live to revise your organization's bylaws, hammering out each and every detail of a policy, or devise a meticulous timeline for a project.  In your personal emails, you enjoy providing details such as travel directions, recipe instructions, or plans for a get-together.

Recommendations: There are many advantages to being a conscientious email type because other people will be grateful that they don't have to take on the work that you are doing (especially if those other people are the open to experience type). However, you may run the risk of not having your emails read because they can get to be too long and detailed. For example, if you bury the time and place of a meeting somewhere on the second screen of the email, people may actually not even see it if they are skimming and therefore you've defeated your purpose. Also, you may cause other people to resent the fact that you're so prompt and they are not. The best way to use conscientiousness to your advantage is to write the email you want to write with all of its gory detail, and then force yourself to edit it down to a reasonable length or level of specificity.  You can always stagger your emails so that you don't hit the recipients with all the details at once but give them time to digest the information and then move on to the next piece that needs to be addressed.