While nonverbal communication (such as head shaking, gesturing, facial expressions, etc.) play a significant role in interpreting meaning for face-to-face interactions, they are distinctly absent from most forms of online interactions. While internet speech has adopted emoticons and punctuation as a form of indicating tone, these can prove insufficient for shared understanding of text amongst all communities, as an ellipsis (...) or a smiling face (🙂) can read differently to users depending on factors such as age, neurodivergence, familiarity with the other party, etc. Tone indicators are meant to explicitly state what the intended tone of the message is, so that readers do not have to interpret for themselves what the messenger is trying to convey.