An interesting conversation at work on Tuesday centered on how technologies like e-mail and instant-messaging systems and text-messaging applications have rendered proper English insignificant.

You've probably received that spam e-mail, in which the sender offers a sentence full of misspelled words, organized in such a way that you can still read the sentence and extract its meaning. On one hand, the premise of the message is that our brains interpret words and phrases in pieces instead of as a whole.

On the other hand, the message is a smart-alecky indictment on grammarheads.

While I've never been a perfect grammarian, consider me among those who value the written word, the well-organized phrase and the clear, concise sentence, complete with properly spelled words. With about a decade of technical experience under my belt, I've always likened English to an unintuitive programming language.

It's sensical and organized but with a ton of exceptions.

Well, turns out that 1970s TV icon and 21st century home-shopping matron Suzanne Somers lost her Malibu, Calif., home to a wildfire this week. She issued a statement to gossip Web site TMZ.com in which her publicist wrote:

"My nature is to look at the glass half full. I don't have a son or daughter in Iraq. I haven't lost a loved one. We will rebuild, and I truly believe we will learn something great from this experience."

To me, that statement is innocuous enough. However, some folks took her sentence about not having a son or daughter in Iraq as a jab against our troops. For awhile this afternoon, it got splattered across the front of The Drudge Report as if it were a Barbra Streisand moment, a Dixie Chicks mistake, the verbal slip-up of a Hollywood liberal.

However, it merely underscores my notion -- that our eCulture has just flat out ruined many of our written communication abilities. In this case, Somers' rep wasn't guilty of a tedious error; she was guilty of ambiguity, opening her client to a headache she probably doesn't need right now.

If it were a must that Somers would note something about American troops, what I would have written is this:

My nature is to look at the glass half-full. Nobody died in this blaze, and it doesn't even compare to the sacrifice our troops have made over the decades overseas. My family is fortunate enough to be able to rebuild, and I truly believe we will learn something great from this experience.

What has happened over the years as we've grown accustomed to communicating informally -- even in a semi-formal business setting -- is that we have trained ourselves to write as we would speak. Doing so, however, doesn't allow for vocal inflection or body language. It requires that the reader interpret the writer's words by themselves.

In this case, I don't think Somers meant a thing by it. Heck, I think she was expressing what I wrote instead of what has been charged to her. However, even if it requires a few more minutes, a longer note, in-depth descriptions or a bulleted list of main points, it would behoove communications specialists in the future to not think so little of the worth of the written word that they just jot down exactly what's on their minds.

Detail, clarity and specificity are your friends, particularly when dealing with the fourth estate.