Magazine

Feeling Between the Lines, by Joyce Menges

Notes

1. By necessity, this work will contain many terms and expression that are new to the reader who is unfamiliar with electronic communication. Please see the glossary for definitions as needed.

2. Each group session provided a recorded transcript which was used for observation and analysis.

3. For some readers, these excerpts from the NGT logs might be difficult to follow; the exchanges frequently come in incomplete sentences that bounce off a thought from another participant. Think about the following as you read.

   Often, the speaker will direct a comment to a particular person by first typing their name or an abbreviation that represents their name. Use this to help you sort through the different threads of the conversation as they unfold. Sometimes it is also useful to read several lines from one speaker to get his complete thought, disregarding, momentarily, the interwoven lines from other speakers.

   This filtering process, this sorting through the mixed up lines of text, becomes second nature with time and experience, but can be very daunting to the uninitiated.