Legacy of Centric 6. Watch Your Tone/hj 7. What's in a Name

Legacy of Centric

BY CLARA MELO DE PAULA

Every fall semester journalism students join UCF’s Magazine Production and Editing course to create a magazine for students, by students.

Professor Rick Brunson was the Centric adviser and associate instructor from 2011 to 2020. He created the class dedicated to publishing Centric magazine in 2011 with the help of Robert Chandler, the former Nicholson School of Communication and media director .

Brunson recalled the moment the idea was first proposed.

“There’s always been an interest among our students in magazines as a medium. The course itself had been on the books in the curriculum for the journalism program for a very long time, at least back into the ‘90s.”

“But around 2010, the Nicholson School Director at the time, Dr. Robert Chandler, invited me one day to go to a luncheon with him. On our way to the luncheon, he looked at me and said ‘Rick, why can’t we have a magazine? Like our own magazine in the Nicholson School?’

“And I said ‘Well, Dr. Chandler, there is no reason we can’t. Are you willing to pay for it?’ Because it takes money to print a magazine. He said we can front the money. And we had a class, but the class at the time was like an industry survey class. Dr. Chandler’s idea, however, was to make a magazine, so the class went from taking a big survey of the magazine industry to a production class. So in 2011, we launched the class and that’s what it became — we produced a magazine.”

Former managing editors and an editorin-chief recall what Centric taught them, whether they continued with journalism or chose another path.

Rachel Stuart Fall 2015

“I look back at my time at Centric and it was such a pivotal moment, not just at UCF, but in my life as a journalist right now. You just learn so much and you don’t have to be the managing editor to get the experience I got ... if you are just seeing the whole process, it’s realworld experience, you guys are doing what people in the real world are doing.” Daniella Medina Fall 2019

“For my career, it was a great thing to add to my resume because not a lot of colleges offer magazine journalism so when you can take it, it really stands out to recruiters ... Being editor-in-chief, specifically, helped me lead a group of people. In my current job, I have led like three or four projects and they always are impressed by how young I am.” Allison Miehl Fall 2016

“I would say Centric definitely taught me to plan ahead but don’t stick so rigidly to your plan to where it’s detrimental to your product. Because you can make all the plans you want and think you have it all figured out, but things come up and things change. Sometimes when you are flexing to those changes is when the best things come out.” Rachel Williams Fall 2014

“Centric taught me a lot. Personally, it just reaffirmed that I am in the right industry. It taught me how to take a story idea and bring it to life. You have to think about how you are going to tell a story in such a way that will resonate with your target audience and that’s a lesson I use every day in my job.”

Kelli Shadik Spring 2011

“It was probably one of the first times I was in a position to lead a team on a project so there was a lot of having to listen to different opinions and having to de-escalate some situations where there was tension. It actually does give a lot of good real-world experience and I understand why Brunson wanted to actually make a magazine so we get to live that experience.” Adam Rhodes Spring 2014

“Centric, first of all, helped me build my confidence in a way that I know how the news industry works. To a certain extent, it is just a class magazine but you are going through the motions that every magazine goes through. You are proofing things. You are coordinating with writers, and you are doing everything that Times or Atlantic do but on a much different scale.”

Watch Your Tone/hj

What are tone tags?

Cybertext lacks body language, facial expression and tone inflection — cues that reflect meaning.

Tone tags are abbreviations of words that describe what a digital sentence is intended to mean or the tone it should be read in.

Who uses tone tags?

They benefit neurodivergent individuals, those who struggle to decipher the tone of a sentence and want their words to be clear.

Examples: /j = joking /hj = half-joking /s = sarcastic /srs = serious /nsrs = not serious /lh = light-hearted /g or /gen = genuine

BY LIANA PROGAR

One day, Kurt Ramos is scrolling through Reddit when he sees a post about people waiting hours in line and spending hundreds of dollars on a new Supreme collection drop.

Intending to be funny, Ramos comments, “These hype beasts are going stupid for this collection.” The chat moderator thought Ramos was saying that the hype beasts have disabilities, and that those with disabilities are stupid, so they temporarily banned Ramos.

Ramos, a UCF alumnus, has Asperger’s syndrome and was referencing a meme. However, the moderator didn’t know this. A misunderstanding occurred because the moderator couldn’t read Ramos’ tone — a 16th century issue that’s still being resolved.

Since the beginning of written language, people have been working to better indicate the emotion and intent of written sentences. According to “Clash of Symbols: A Ride Through the Riches of Glyphs,” in the 1580s, printer Henry Denham tried to popularize the “percontation point,” a backwards question mark that would indicate a rhetorical question.

Fast forward to the advent of the computer age, and emoticons and emojis were introduced. However, even those can have different meanings than what they suggest. Thus, tone tags entered the 21st century chat room. Although they are not new, they have gained traction recently on Twitter, Tumblr, TikTok and Discord, assisting those with autism spectrum disorder and others that are neurodivergent.

“People with ASD don’t naturally develop the ability to interpret other people’s feelings or to understand people who have a different perspective,” said Terri Daly, Director of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders.

Tone tags clarify what a digital sentence means, preventing misunderstandings. For example, it’s common for people to say they’re “crying” when they find something extremely funny. Since others cannot hear the poster laughing, adding “/j” directly to the end of the sentence clarifies that the person is joking and not actually crying.

In Ramos’ situation, tone tags could’ve prevented the moderator from temporarily blocking him. Having used tone tags since 2016, Ramos has found he primarily benefits from others' use of the tags.

“It’s helped me understand people’s overall intention and realize no one is actually mad at me,” Ramos said.

While tone tags are meant to make the internet more accessible, they should only be used if a sentence can be interpreted in different ways. Overusing tone tags can seem condescending and annoying, making the receiver feel like a child who doesn’t understand anything.

Mack Brueggemann, a junior kinesiology major, began using tone tags in October 2021, making it easier for him to express his tone and minimize misunderstandings.

“Clarity is power”, “It could be helpful in getting rid of some forms of miscommunication and clarify things better.” Brueggemann said.

Online users will often include if they would like tone tags used in communication with them or if they do not. Things like pronoun inclusions and trigger warnings have been normalized, and over time, the use of tone tags could be too.

“It doesn’t cost anything, and it doesn’t take a lot longer,” Daly said. “If it’s something that helps people, then it’s something to consider.”